Daler Nazarov

About

Biography

Daler Nazarov, from Dushanbe, sings, composes and writes music for film. His songs set Pamiri folklore and Persian poetry against rock guitar. Audiences know him for "Ey, pari" and "Turki sherozi", and cinema-goers for his score to the film Luna Papa. Nazarov was born in 1959 in Stalinabad, now Dushanbe, and names Pamiri as his native language. He left music school after two years and took his degree in Russian philology. He sang briefly in the state ensemble Gulshan, then gathered musicians drawn to Tajik folklore. He walked onto the stage with a guitar, although audiences were used to the accordion and tablak. In 1979 he wrote the music for Davlat Khudonazarov's film Yunosti pervoe utro and sang "Ey, pari" in it. In the mid-1980s the whole republic learned his name through "Turki sherozi", set to verse by Hafiz, and "Chak-chaki boron". The group took prizes at the Jurmala-89 and Bukhara-90 festivals. At the end of 1992, when civil war began in Tajikistan, Nazarov moved to Almaty. There he became close to Batyrkhan Shukenov of A-Studio, and Shukenov's initiative brought out Daler's first albums. In 1997 he returned to Dushanbe and played his first post-war solo concert at the Borbad concert hall. According to Asia-Plus, he has scored more than twenty films, among them Luna Papa, Shik and Tanker "Tango" by Bakhtiyar Khudojnazarov. Luna Papa won the main prize at Kinotavr in 2000. Since the 2000s he performs rarely and works mostly on research: he collects folklore, catalogues it and experiments. Asia-Plus describes the result as vocal-instrumental poems in which Sufi poetry sounds alongside the daf, tanbur and nay. Folk music, he says, cannot be reworked completely, and only someone who understands its essence can add elements of other styles. Radio Ozodi names Muboraksho Mirzoshoev, Nobovar Chanorov and Nargis Bandishoeva as pupils of the "Daler school". Live sound matters to Nazarov: he criticises backing tracks and chooses small halls where he can feel the audience breathe. On 16 March 2016 he played the Digital October centre in Moscow, his first appearance in Russia in six years. His son Abror played guitar, Andrey Tanzyu the frame drum, and Shavkmamad Pulodov sang maddo. He later played Tashkent (15 April 2024, Turkiston Art Palace) and The Spirit of Tengri festival in Almaty (8 June 2025). A listener hears love songs, some of them set to Hafiz, in plain arrangements. In Moscow the hall welcomed "Mastam" warmly, and the evening ended with "Ey, pari".