String of musical stories

Ayxamgul Amat, an inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of Muqam in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, works at an ICH promotion center in the Ili Kazak autonomous prefecture and has six students. She began learning the traditional performing art at 14 and can now execute a complete set of 12 suites of Muqam. “With increasingly improved lives, we have more time and energy to spend performing Muqam and showcasing Xinjiang’s traditional art and culture,” she said.