What’s Wrong With Uzbekistan’s New Music Video Rules?

Uzbekkonsert, the Uzbek state body responsible for regulating the country’s music industry, published new rules for music videos in February. Any Uzbek artists wishing to keep their license – required to perform in the country and air music videos on state-controlled TV – must adhere to the regulations, which will reportedly be enforced via a 15-member commission that will vet music videos.

The new rules list broad categories of “inappropriate movements” that should not appear in music videos, from male singers wearing garish jewelry to “showing” off extravagant cars or mansions. “Unsuitable” dance moves and “revealing” outfits are banned, as are tattoos, product placements, and alcohol. Music videos should not encourage a “lazy lifestyle, shamelessness, and lust,” nor should they incite ethnic or religious animosity. Promoting violence, war or terrorism is banned, so is inappropriately using or misplacing state symbols such as the national flag or a photo of the president.

Uzbekkonsert’s rules, an official at the Culture Ministry told RFE/RL, are designed to promote Uzbek culture and prevent the influence of Western pop music.

Uzbekistan is far from the first country to set content standards.

In the United States, federal law prohibits obscene, indecent, and profane content from being broadcast on the radio or TV – although enforcement of the law has varied over time as the country’s moral attitudes shifted. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the regulator body responsible for policing content. The definitions of obscene, indecent, and profane were set via a 1964 Supreme Court case, which also gave us the famous line written, in reference to pornograpy, by Justice Potter Stewart: “I know it when I see it.”

The FCC’s definitions remain vague after a fashion: obscene content meets all three parts of a so-called three-pronged test, it “must appeal to an average person's prurient interest; depict or describe sexual conduct in a ‘patently offensive’ way; and, taken as a whole, lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value”; indecent content “portrays sexual or excretory organs or activities in a way that does not meet the three-prong test for obscenity”; and profane content “includes ‘grossly offensive’ language that is considered a public nuisance.”

What differentiates U.S. regulations from the new Uzbek music video rules is that Uzbekistan is much more concerned with promoting traditional Uzbek culture and combating forces that would, in the mind of regulators at least, pollute that cultural heritage.

On the surface, this seems a product of simple autocracy – a state telling its artists what they can and cannot do – but there’s more at work here than a state exerting control for the sake of control or for the purposes of propaganda. Reality is more nuanced: a mix of autocratic policymaking habits, genuine concern for the preservation of local culture, and standard-issue state moralizing have resulted in Uzbekkonsert’s rules.

Take for example, Uzbekkonsert’s order that state symbols – the national flag, the state’s coat of arms, and the president’s picture – be used appropriately or not at all. On one hand, this is expected; few autocrats enjoy their effigy going up in flames or the flag being stomped on. But events preceding the new rules demonstrate that the state’s reasoning may also go the other direction: discouraging deification. Last summer Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, half a year into office, shied away from the whiff of a cult of personality and the state roundly dismissed an artist too prasing of the president.

In June 2017, Uzbekkonsert announced that dedicating music videos to the head of state “is unethical.” The issue had arisen because Dilfuza Saidova, an actress and singer, put out a song that praised Mirziyoyev as the “handsome sultan” of the land, “the shadow of god on Earth,’ and a “beloved human being.” The video, which had been posted to YouTube, included images of Mirziyoyev.

In July 2017, Uzbekkonsert issued a new rule which mandated that musicians get permission before posting new videos to YouTube.

A Uzbekkonsert official told RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service, “This is being done to prevent the dissemination of music videos that do not correspond to national traditions and the mentality of the Uzbek people.”

State authorities may even be genuinely concerned with preserving Uzbek culture. Given that Uzbekistan existed in the homogenizing environs of the Soviet Union for 70 years before independence, after 1991 Tashkent – and the other Central Asian capitals – strove to define and differentiate themselves. Kyrgyzstan seized upon the great epic of Manas to illustrate the new nation’s deep roots and the works of Chingiz Aitmatov to illustrate its literary prowess; Uzbekistan touted its ancient empires, emphasizing the vast territory brought under Timur’s rule; and Tajikistan, before a more recent falling out with Tehran, emphasized its unique Persian-linked heritage.

At the same time, in much the same way that Tajikistan’s efforts to mandate what is “traditional Tajik clothing” and what is not neglect to factor in the fluid and evolving nature of “culture,” so too do Uzbekistan’s new music video rules.

In fact, they risk restricting cultural development. If the authorities in Tashkent aim to lock Uzbek culture in amber, preserving it unchanged for future generations, they’ll fail to support new cultural growth. Striving to keep Uzbek culture alive in such a fashion – starved of innovation – is a death sentence.

Javohir Zokirov, a prominent Uzbek musician from a long line of notable Uzbek performers, said that introducing “so many restrictions” on Uzbek musicians “doesn’t lead to anything good.”

Zokirov’s cousin, U.S.-based singer Nargiz Zokirova, “doesn’t want to return to Uzbekistan” he said, following social media attacks prompted by her large tattoos. “Rejecting Nargiz’s singing talent because of her tattoos is absurd,” Javohir Zokirov told RFE/RL.

The new Uzbek music video regulations are the product of an autocratic policymaking process and a state moralizing about what is and is not appropriate – but they are also a product of genuine fear that Uzbek music and culture will be subsumed by the tides of global pop. Instead of weighing down Uzbek artists with more rules, Tashkent ought to cut the tethers that have long weighed the country’s creative classes down.