Microkhan by Brendan I. Koerner

Here at Microkhan, we spend an awful lot of time highlighting all that is wretched about Turkmenistan’s political culture. Heartless autocracy can never fully squelch creativity, however, as the raucous drumming of Rishad Shafi so ably demonstrates. His prog-fusion band Gunesh started out as a mainstay of state-run Turkmen television, but later involved into something much more ethereal and, quite frankly, bizarre. Check out a ye olde music video of Gunesh here; it starts to get good when they journey to sub-Saharan Africa to set up an outdoor recording session.