The Miras Silk Road Collective

The Miras Silk Road Collective (formerly the London Uyghur Ensemble), founded in 2018, works to encourage collaboration among musicians from different cultures along the Silk Road, and celebrate their shared cultural heritage. The core group of professional Uzbek and Uyghur performers have collaborated with musicians and dancers from India, China, Japan, the US and the UK. The Miras Silk Road Collective perform classical maqam, folk songs and instrumental pieces on traditional instruments, ranging widely across Turkish, Azeri, Iranian, Afghan, Uzbek, and especially Uyghur musical traditions.

Rahima Mahmut (vocalist)

The group’s lead singer, comes from a large Uyghur family with a strong musical tradition, and she has kept that alive from exile in the UK. Rahima has composed songs from the poems of persecuted Uyghur writers, and her music has been featured in news documentaries highlighting the plight of her people. In this era of cultural erasure in the Uyghur homeland, the Miras Silk Road Collective is committed to promoting and defending the rich musical culture and history of the Uyghur people.

Rachel Harris (dutar)

A Professor of Ethnomusicology at SOAS. Her research focuses on Central Asia‚ especially on Uyghur musical and religious heritage, and she has spent long periods in East Turkestan where she learned the dutar with master musicians Musajan Rozi, Yasin Muhpul and Abdulla Majnun. She is the author of several books including Making a Musical Canon: The Uyghur Twelve Muqam. She leads the British Academy funded Uyghur Meshrep Project which supports efforts to revitalise Uyghur language and culture in Kazakhstan. Her latest ERC-funded project Maqām Beyond Nation focuses on musical connections across Asia.

Shohret Nur

An outstanding young Uyghur musician, currently serving as a Research Assistant in the Department of Music at SOAS University of London. Having studied rawap performance at the prestigious Xinjiang Arts Institute, he furthered his musical education in Turkey, earning an undergraduate degree in Music in 2019 from Istanbul’s Minar University. A prize-winning performer specializing in Uyghur rawap and dutar plucked lutes, he is also a teacher, composer, and adept musical analyst with a particular focus on the Uyghur Twelve Muqam classical music repertoire. His compositions have been featured in films and international competitions, including the International Federation of Students, and Requiem for Justice.

Ahmet Ozan Baysal

A Turkish bağlama (saz) player, composer and performer, specialising in şelpe – an Anatolian bağlama performance technique that dispenses with a plectrum. Having played the instrument from a very early age, much of his music is a synthesis of traditional bağlama şelpe performance practices and harmonic practices in tonal and jazz music. After completing his Ph.D. (2013-2020) at Istanbul Technical University, Ozan is now a visiting scholar at SOAS, University of London, conducting his post-doctoral research. Ozan has performed throughout Europe, including at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence in Marseille, Nuoro Jazz Festival in Sardinia, and Making Tracks International Music Exchange Programme in the UK.

Imogen Faux

Imogen plays classical and folk violin. From a family of music composers and performers, she was influenced early on by the folk traditions of the British Isles. Study and work took Imogen to the Arab World, where she played, performed and worked with artists from Egypt and Morocco. Now she practices music from across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.

Li Cheong (ghijek)

Born in Macau and grew up in Hong Kong. He graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong with a BA in 2002 and a Master of Music (Composition) in 2004. He learned erhu (Chinese two-stringed violin) with Ms. Hsin Hsiao-ling. After graduated, he worked as a music teacher and freelance composer. He furthered his studies at the University of York and earned his PhD in Music (Composition) in 2014. As an erhu performer, he has played together with Portuguese singer Conan Osiris and the folk rock group Quid in 2017-19. He met the London Silk Road Music Collective first in 2014 and learnt to play Uyghur ghijek. He has been playing in the ensemble since 2020.