Turpan nazirkom

3 min read

There is yet no agreed explanation in the academic community about the meaning of nazirkom. But there are some legends that are really interesting.

One legend says that nazirkom is a kind of dance to celebrate victory of war. During the celebratory activity, people made various strange and ugly moves along with the rhythm of drumbeat and music to smear the image of wounded soldiers and stupid generals of the counterparty. And it gradually developed into a kind of dance to express festival atmosphere among the people.

Another legend says that there was prince in Turpan who couldn’t walk. He had a neurotic servant named Nazir(someone who was careless was called Kam in Uygur language. Kam and Kom are homophones, so Nazir was also called Nazirkom). Nazirkom was very close to the prince. He often mimicked the moves of chicks, ducks or other animals to amuse him. The prince felt it was very funny, so he tried his best to mimic. And later he could walk. The king held a massive banquet to celebrate. At the banquet, the king asked Nazirkom to show how he taught the little prince to walk. Nazirkom began to mimic the moves of chicks, ducks and other animals to the beat of the music. Since then, this kind of dance began to spread in Turpan and Nazirkom became the name of this dance. People would mimic the moves of nazirkom during festive activities to show good health and auspiciousness. It could be passed down till today exactly because it is lively and fully of fun.

Actually nazirkom could be found in the well-known Qiuci Music and Yizhou music. In Qiuci dance with the accompaniment of music, there were monkey dance, horse dance, bird dance and lion dance. In Yizhou music, there were chick dance, horse dance and camel dance. Camel dance was performed by 30 persons. The dancers bent their back and waist with one connecting with another, like a marching camel caravan, which was very funny.

In “Life of Xiajiasi” in the New Book of Tang, there is description: “Acrobatics included camel acrobatics, lion acrobatics horse acrobatics and rope acrobatics.”From this we could see that dance mimicking animals started to enjoy great popularity among the ancient nomadic ethnic groups in the Western Regions. The chick dance in Yizhou dance accompanied with music used to be mask dance, but now the mask was removed. Chick dance can be performed with muqam or alone. The song and dance is rhythmic and sonorous, with extensive drumbeat. The audience enjoy the performance very much.

Nazirkom is mostly improvised by male with two as a group, sometimes female also dance nazirkom. At the beginning, they will dance to the music as they like, with the quickening rhythm turning into the climax, competitive performance begins. At first, the moves are common. One performer stands up, the other squats down; one moves to the left, the other moves to the right, well coordinated. Suddenly one performer beats his opponent with a new move and the opponent mimics him and returns with a new move.