Abdunazar Poyonov

Abdunazar Poyonov was born in 1949 in the Qiziriq district of the Surkhandarya region. He took up the people's epic-singing art from an early age and learned it in the tradition of the Sherobod dastan school.

In 1973 he graduated from the Termez Pedagogical Institute and the same year became a teacher at a general school in the Qiziriq district. He combined teaching with his work as a bakhshi.

He took his craft from earlier masters, among them Mardonaqul Bakhshi and Umir Bakhshi. His repertoire includes the dastans “Alpomish”, “Malika Ayyor” and “Sherali”, dombra melodies and folk terma songs (“Do'mbiram”, “Nima aytay” and others), as well as terma of his own composition about love of the homeland, loyalty and the life of the people. He used throat singing in performance.

He won prizes at bakhshi contests: an international one held in Kazakhstan (1997) and one in Termez (1999). In 2003 he received the title People's Bakhshi of Uzbekistan.

Poyonov performed in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. The journalist and photographer Husniddin Ato described him as a very sociable man who kept searching creatively despite his age: preparing for a concert in Tashkent in 2016, he learned the dastan “Kelinoy” specially for it.

Abdunazar Poyonov died on 16 May 2022, aged 73.