Levin's book, then, chronicles his journeys throughout this region, as he and OM search out these "fools of God," traditional musicians who have managed to preserve and sustain their culture's beliefs and music despite the intense pressures of the modern world. Some of these people are professional musicians, such as Turgun Alimatov and Munajat Yulchieva. Levin's encounters with these professionals suggest that these artists struggle to make ends meet, largely because the music they play is typically classical maquam, or Islamic court music, and there haven't been emirs in Samarkand since the 1920s. These artists survive playing at state-sponsored concerts or at weddings and other festivals (called toys) - though, thanks to Levin and others (like Yo-Yo Ma), they are starting to gain a wider Western audience.
Others are simply farmers or workers who live simple lives but possess a rare musical talent that they display to friends or at toys. One of the most interesting of these other group is a young woman, Xushvakt, the aunt of a man who Levin and OM had visited to meet and record. Levin met and recorded her two, brief performances on the chang-qobuz (Jew's harp or mouth organ). He was with her for no more than fifteen minutes, but, as Levin notes, "I felt...I'd been thrust through a time warp to a moment near the beginning of music" (156).
It is moments like this that give Levin's book its depth, for he has the ability to peer inside a culture that is so different from our own and pry open things that no one in that culture, or perhaps in ours, would ever bother to notice. Women in this culture, as in many Islamic cultures, are kept in the background; this woman's appearance and performance were, perhaps, the highlight of her life, the one moment when she could demonstrate her remarkable talents to someone who would bother to pay attention. Levin's documentation of this event is just a small example of the amazing discoveries he makes in the course of his travels.
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