Brown University PhD candidate Mohammad Geldi Geldi Nejad's article “Pata and Diploma: Strategies for Sustaining Indigenous Knowledge Transmission in the Modern Music Schools of Turkmenistan” was published in the Summer/Fall 2025 edition of Asian Music (Volume 56, No. 2). An abstract follows:

Ethnomusicologists have often shown how Indigenous modes of knowledge transmission tend to stagnate within formal music schools under the influence of Western models. Yet post-Soviet music schools in Turkmenistan present a counterpoint to these narratives. This article, drawing on the author’s years of study at the D. Öwezow Turkmen State Specialized Music College, argues that some strategies aim to subvert an institutionalized rupture. It begins by conceptualizing the meanings of pata (blessing) and gaýybana şägirt (disciple in absentia), mystically imbued stages through which an emerging musician is conferred spiritual links to legendary masters of the past. Then, by illustrating the strategies in which these Indigenous methods of transmission find meaning within the state schools of Turkmenistan, this account challenges assumptions regarding the inadequacy of institutions for handing down tradition.

Read the article in the hardcopy edition or online (with Brown University or other credentials) at Project MUSE.