Turkmen President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov's lavish birthday celebrations last week, when many dignitaries beat a path to his door, are still the talk of the town. The president was star of his own show, crooning a song he said was an original, "For You, My White Flower," as we noted earlier this week.
Critics are now claiming he swiped the tune from an Uzbek folk song, says Radio Liberty's Kazakh Service Radio Azattyk, but unfortunately, the Turkmen television clip still hasn't surfaced on Youtube, so it's hard to tell. In yet another indication of the Turkmen leader's growing cult of personality, the guitar and accordion on which he played the tune were sent to a national museum as "state treasures." A new honorific title was conceived for Berdymukhamedov, "Arkadag," which means "Protective Mountain," says the State News Agency of Turkmenistan.
Now it turns out that a number of foreign musical acts were also hired to play for the president's birthday bash, notably Boney M, the 1970s disco band which was tremendously popular in the former Soviet Union, and continues to remain so today -- singer Bobby Farrell died last year after a show in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the age of 61.
Other performers included French singer Patricia Kaas, Italian artist In-Grid, Taisiya Povaliy, a Ukrainian performer, the Swedish duo Arash, and Russian stars Natalya Podol'skaya, Vera Brezhneva, Zara (who gushed on her blog that it was a great honor to play for the president) and Filipp Kirkorov, according to Turkmeninform, a commercial news portal about Turkmenistan which reports pro-government information.
A reader at the Russian-language social and news site Turkmeniya.ru complained that he couldn't find information about where or when the concert was, and when he watched it on TV, he noticed there were few people in the audience.
British pop star Sting recently backed out of an engagement to play for the birthday of Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev, as a gesture of support for striking oil workers, prompted by Amnesty International, EurasiaNet.org reported.
Sting wasn't so conscientious last year, when he agreed to play for Gulnara Karimova, the daughter of Uzbek President Islam Karimov, a move that is still being protested by human rights activists.
Sign up for Eurasianet's free weekly newsletter. Support Eurasianet: Help keep our journalism open to all, and influenced by none.