Teaching Traditional Music

Music and arts education are at the core of AKMP’s mission. They represent a central focus of its cultural development investments in Kazakhstan. AKMP’s collaboration with Kökil Music College began in 2003 in support of its “Murager” (Legacy) programme. This is a proprietary teaching methodology aiming to refocus secondary school music education throughout Kazakhstan on indigenous musical traditions. Students learned to play the two-stringed dombyra, widely considered Kazakhstan’s national instrument, and to sing folk songs.

Beyond its purely musical results, Murager was designed to strengthen cultural pluralism and tolerance amongst school-age children.

Murager was supported by an array of curriculum materials, a yearly teacher training seminar and the ongoing production of high-quality musical instruments for use by students engaged in the programme. The target audience for Murager was not future professional musicians but future audience members, based on the idea that music and art can only flourish in a society that understands and values them.

By 2014, Murager operated in some 70 secondary schools throughout Kazakhstan, and had produced curriculum materials extending from first to 11th grades. More than 10,000 students nationwide had enrolled in a Murager class. In 2013, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Education approved Murager as an official alternative music curriculum for the fourth grade, marking the beginning of the Ministry’s phased assumption of responsibility for the production of textbooks, curriculum materials and teacher training courses.

Other Educational Support

AKMP supports the Department of Epic Singing at Kyzyl-Orda University. This is directed by Almas Almatov, an esteemed epic singer who has actively collected oral poetry from living reciters to create a digital archive of Kazakh epics. AKMP also supports Bidas Rustembekov, one of Kazakhstan’s leading epic reciters, who transmits his musical art to students in both Kyzyl-Orda and Almaty.

Performance

In 2018, the Aga Khan Music Programme premiered Qyrq Qyz (Forty Girls), a multimedia reinterpretation of an ancient Central Asian epic. Its music director was Kazakh master qobyz player Raushan Orazbay, an instructor of qobyz at University of Arts in Nur-Sultan. Other performers from Kazakhstan included students and graduates of Almaty Conservatory and the University of Arts, both of which have maintained long-term relationships with AKMP. Qyrq Qyz toured in the USA and was presented in prestigious venues in France, Germany and Uzbekistan.

Publication and Recording

Kazakh music has been well represented in other AKMP projects. These include Music of Central Asia, a 10-volume CD-DVD anthology released worldwide by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Volume 4 of the anthology, entitled Bardic Divas: Women’s Voices in Central Asia (2007), features Kazakh vocalists Ulzhan Baibussynova and Ardak Issataeva, and dombyra player Aigul Ulkenbaeva. The Music of Central Asia was published by Indiana University Press (2016) and is used as a textbook in a number of leading American universities. It was co-edited by Kazakh ethnomusicologist Saida Daukeeva, who also contributed several chapters, along with Kazakh music scholars Alma Kunanbay and Jangül Qojakhmetova.