What is now generally identified as Uyghur “muqam” song and music consists of shifting and diverse traditions crafted by a wide spectrum of performers across many years. Over the past century, the Uyghur Twelve Muqam have been taken from the repertoire of traditional performers, reinvented and widely publicized as classical Uyghur heritage. More recently, multiple regional muqam traditions have also undergone a similar recreation as local heritage deserving of recognition and local pride. Dominant historical narratives portray each tradition as cohesive and autochthonous, but in fact they emerge from the wide circulation and recreation of cultural material by diverse, often highly mobile performers. In this brief survey, I focus on the internal changes to the Twelve Muqam tradition as it has been institutionalized and put under politicized management. I suggest that even this official canon serves as a broad repertoire that undergoes constant change through performer selection and modification, and remains open to new versions in service of the changing goals of those who claim the authority to establish the canon. Despite institutional enclosure and taking control from traditional performers such as Ömär Akhun, the Twelve Muqam do interact with the broader ecosystem of performance genres, settings and practices, although these too are increasingly under threat from Chinese cultural controls.