A halal Chinese Muslim restaurant in New York City is an unlikely setting for a concert by a highly acclaimed bard of the Turkmen tradition. Yet on a Saturday afternoon in Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood, before an audience of attentive listeners and curious onlookers peering through the window, the multi-award-winning Mohammad Geldi Geldi Nejad filled Beef Up Noodle with sustained melodic phrases and guttural embellishments. At times, his dexterous strumming of the dutar, a two-stringed long-necked lute, deliberately mimicked the rhythm of galloping horse hooves central to the Turkmen bardic style.

Mohammad was raised in the Turkmen community of Gonbad-e Kavus in northeastern Iran. At age ten, he became only the second musician ever to receive the honorary title Oghlan Bakhshi, meaning Child Bard. His musical education in Turkmen bardic traditions began in early childhood, before more formal training in Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat.

Turkmen culture, shaped by a nomadic heritage, extends across Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, with smaller populations in Turkey, Iraq, and the North Caucasus. It draws on nomadic traditions where performance serves as a primary vehicle of cultural expression. Central Asian music and culture, carried by diasporic communities from these regions, has found a growing audience in the United States. Turkmen traditions, however, given the minuscule size of the Turkmen population in the U.S., remain largely unfamiliar to most audiences.

Even so, Mohammad has brought his music to audiences beyond Turkmenistan and Iran, performing in parts of Europe and the U.S., including recent concerts at the Lowell Folk Festival in Massachusetts and at Roulette in Brooklyn. At the latter, he offered Western listeners rare access to a musical lineage sustained within a family across generations. Performing under his honorific alias Oghlan Bakhshi, he appeared alongside his father, the gyjak, or spike fiddle, master Abdolghaffar Geldinejad, and his wife and regular musical collaborator, Zyyada Jumayeva, a dutar player who represents the female bardic tradition of Turkmenistan. His album Journey Across the Steppes is the first international release of Turkmen folk music in 30 years. His work has also been documented in a book series, The Music of Central Asia.

At Beef Up Noodle, Mohammad’s performance, titled Songs of the Bakhshi: Turkmen Bardic Heritage, formed part of a broader curatorial landscape shaped by ethnomusicologist Mu Qian, whose work spans scholarship, publishing, and community-based music making. From Zayton to New York is the concert series he curates, exploring how music travels through histories of migration and exchange. Mohammad’s appearance opened a Central Asian trilogy within the series, to be followed by programs devoted to Kyrgyz and Kazakh musical traditions in early 2026. This trilogy represents one strand of Mu Qian’s wider mission, developed through the See & Sea Cultural Foundation, to support minority musicians and bring underrepresented musical cultures from across Asia into conversation with audiences beyond their places of origin.

Mu Qian with Mohammad Geldi Geldi Nejad; image: Paul Adams

British expat Margaret Murray, an audience member whose chance meeting with Mu Qian led her to attend several concerts in the series, remarked that Mohammad’s Saturday afternoon performance stood out for its diverse Western audience, although one Turkmen attendee made his presence known during Mu Qian’s introduction. Other shows curated by Mu Qian, she observed, are often attended primarily by New York audiences who share geographic or cultural roots with the performers.

In this interview, Mohammad discusses his Oghlan Bakhshi origin story, his deep attachment to Turkmen culture through his craft, and the path that led him to become an Ivy League doctoral student living and performing in the U.S.

TCA: You began playing the dutar at the age of six, growing up in a household where music was part of everyday life. What do you remember most about those early experiences of listening and learning?

Mohammad: I was born into a musical family. My mother sang Turkmen folk songs and lullabies at home, and my father is a master of the spike fiddle. We call it a gyjak. Our home was a place where master musicians from across Turkmenistan and Iran came to practice before concerts and folk festivals, so from an early age, I was surrounded by music.

I started accompanying my father wherever he went. He played at weddings, and I remember that when I was five years old, a master bard from Turkmenistan performed at a wedding for Iranian Turkmens, with my father accompanying him. The performance lasted very late into the night, and an elder, joking, said, “Kids your age are sleeping and having sweet dreams. It’s 3 a.m.! What are you doing here?” I think I was the youngest in the audience, and that moment opened my eyes. I was fascinated by what was going on.

Image: Mohammad Geldi Geldi Nejad

TCA: At what point did elders or master musicians begin to recognize your abilities as something unusual for your age?

Mohammad: By the time I was ten years old, I’d learned a large portion of the bardic repertoire, including solo dutar pieces and songs based on heroic and romantic epics. That was when the council of Turkmen music masters gave me the honorary title, Oghlan Bakhshi. I was the second person in the history of Turkmen music to receive this title, after the great Sahy Jepbarow.

TCA: How do Turkmen bards balance responsibility to tradition with individual creativity?

Mohammad: When you receive a blessing from the masters, you also receive responsibility. You need to transmit and teach this music to the next generation, but you also need to develop your own performance style. It shouldn’t be that when someone listens, they say it’s exactly the same.

I wrote about this in my article published in Asian Music, called Pata and Diploma. Pata means blessing. There is a unique concept in Turkmen music called disciple in absentia. This means becoming a disciple of a master who passed away long ago, not face-to-face, but through recordings and through the stories your master carries.

This was how I learned from the first Oghlan Bakhshi. When I received this blessing, my masters told me that I’m a disciple in absentia of that master, someone who brings that charisma alive through performance. In our bardic repertoire, each song often contains a section that serves as a master’s signature. This is how individuality exists within the lineage.

TCA: Your family founded a music school in Iran that bears the name Oghlan Bakhshi. Why was establishing that school important to you and your family?

Mohammad: As a family, we established the first private music school among Iranian Turkmen in 2005. After the Islamic Revolution, many families were reluctant to send their children to learn music. There was a feeling that music didn’t have any future. My father wanted to show that music plays an important role in understanding culture. Over time, the school blossomed. Today, I see many young musicians learning instruments and singing, and it’s fascinating to see how attitudes have changed.

TCA: What led you to continue your studies in Turkmenistan as a teenager?

Mohammad: When I was fifteen, I joined a world music festival in Prague, and I was selected as one of the best young singers. In Iran, we didn’t have an academic school for learning Turkmen music, so I went to Turkmenistan to study with masters there. I studied at the Turkmen State Music College and then continued my studies at the Turkmen National Conservatory in Ashgabat. In Turkmenistan, I had the chance to learn from many masters, and I’m always grateful for that opportunity. I received pata from one of the most respected dutar masters, Çary Suwçy.

TCA: What differences did you notice when you began living and studying in Turkmenistan?

Mohammad: There were small differences, like vocabulary. In Iran, we use Persian words, and in Turkmenistan, Russian words are more common. What interested me most was how bardic styles are divided into regional schools in Turkmenistan, while Iranian Turkmen musicians are more open to singing across styles. At the same time, each master still has their own individual style. For Iranian Turkmen children, music is one of the main ways to learn Turkmen culture today. They don’t have schools where they can learn the Turkmen language or history, so music plays a very important role. In Turkmenistan, there are conservatories, colleges, and masters working within a formal system, so the resources are very different. I also learned the differences between Iranian Turkmen performance styles and those practiced in Turkmenistan.

Nowadays, many bards from Turkmenistan come to Iran to perform, and Iranian Turkmen musicians go to Turkmenistan. So, there is an ongoing exchange.

After finishing the conservatory, I became interested in exploring the music of other Turkic-speaking peoples. I spent time in Turkey, where I worked closely with Turkish musicians who play the bağlama and performed with them in many concerts. This period was important for me in understanding musical connections across Turkic traditions.

During the pandemic, I spent more time listening and researching, and realized how little Turkmen music has been documented academically. My masters encouraged me to contribute through scholarship. I started learning English while I was still in Turkmenistan. In 2021, I entered Wesleyan University, completed my master’s degree, and then applied to Brown University, where I’m now doing my PhD in Musicology and Ethnomusicology.

Image: Paul Adams

TCA: What does it feel like, on a personal level, to bring a deeply place-rooted art form into the very different cultural environment of the U.S.?

Mohammad: That’s a great question. When I first came to the U.S., it wasn’t easy to openly discuss what’s important in Turkmen music. Even though I moved to Turkmenistan at age 16 and lived there for about ten years, and also spent time in Turkey, the U.S. was a completely different environment. I love the U.S. environment so much. It challenged me and made me think about what might seem obvious to someone within the culture, and how it could be different for someone who has never heard this music.

I must admit that, to this day, I really enjoy audiences in the U.S. and how curious they are about Turkmen music. During my performances, I received many questions that pushed me to think more deeply about the music and reflect on my ancestors’ creative musical life. In many ways, these questions helped me find answers through my academic work, questions I might not have encountered if I were performing, say, in Turkmenistan. I’ve also made many good friends here, for which I’m very grateful.

TCA: Western listeners hear your music without the cultural memories Central Asians bring to it. What do you hope audiences feel or understand when experiencing your interpretations of Turkmen epic and lyrical traditions?

Mohammad: When Western listeners hear this music, they may not share the cultural memories that Turkmens and other Central Asians bring to it, but they still have their own emotional landscapes. In my performances in the U.S., I’ve been amazed at how the audience feels the intimacy and intensity that live inside these epic songs, even if they don’t understand the language. The songs speak of love, loss, exile, and devotion, resonating with universal human experiences.

TCA: The Turkmen diaspora in the U.S. is small and dispersed. Have you had meaningful interactions with Turkmen or broader Central Asian audiences here?

Mohammad: Yes, seeing Central Asian people at my concerts has always been great. There’s a strong solidarity among Central Asian-rooted people in the U.S. I’ve participated in cultural events, and it’s always amazing to meet new people.

TCA: Looking ahead, what is your long-term academic and artistic vision?

Mohammad: I hope to be in an academic environment where I can combine research, teaching, and performance. I started teaching music at age nine to my peers, and since then, teaching has become my joy. Research is important to me because it helps me find answers to questions I find interesting. Reading literature on various musical traditions worldwide helps me connect Turkmen music with broader histories and traditions, and more importantly, learn about different musical cultures. For my music, I continue performing and creating new songs and pieces. Performance is a great source of inspiration and possibility, helping me imagine new ideas.

For me, teaching, performing, and researching are inseparable. Each one reshapes the others. This interconnectedness constantly renews my curiosity and creativity. It allows me to envision the future of Turkmen bardic art not just as a matter of preservation and transmission, but as an evolving form of expression.