Chocolate Tuba

Yulduz Usmonova, Tak Boom

25 years ago or so, during the great World Music scare. there was an attempt to make Uzbek pop songbird Yulduz Usmonova the Next Big Thing. She got a western release, she got western producers, she got western music. Well, kind of. She still sings Uzbek pop, but this single mixes in surf guitar, Jamaican toasting, South African choral music, a bit of jazz, the kitchen sink. Sounds like it might be a mess, but it actually works pretty well. I mean, I can still sing it 25 years on. It wasn't quite the hit they hoped for, and Yulduz went back to being the big fish in the Uzbek small pond. And it's hard to find this version of this song among all the similarly-titled other stuff she did ("Tak Bum", "Bum Tak", etc.)