Kazakhstan

Mom! You need to hear this voice! This voice was my first experience in Kazakhstan and I am flabbergasted! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEz1qGS0T1Q. Dimash Kudaibergen has an incredible range, right! Besides my favorite of his songs in the link above, I’m sharing a concert he did in New York in January, 2020. Look at those fans! The first part is here and the second part will follow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKf3z66QiIk.

I saw glimpses of traditional Kazakh costumes and instruments in the Dimash Kudaibergen concert. I see more in this orchestra of Kazakh folk instruments. I think I like this one even more than the first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9vzJzinZ_o. I wasn’t expecting to find this much music from Kazakhstan online. I’m having fun, especially since I know my mother will be enjoying this music with me as we continue a practice we started in this last year where she listens in her home and I listen in mine, but we know we are together.

This next piece of music has a twist and it shows that the people of Kazakhstan have a sense of humor. Let me give you some background. Sacha Baron Cohen, an English comedian, created a character named Borat for British television. This fictional character is a Kazakhstani journalist. Eventually a movie was made with this character called Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. In this movie Borat, who doesn’t understand American customs, interviews real-life Americans. Understandably some Kazakhstani people were horrified that there was a British man apparently making fun of them, but tourism went up significantly. Marat Bisengaliev, a Kazakh violinist and conductor of two orchestras in Kazakhstan, initiated a commission for composer Erran Baron Cohen (Sasha Baron Cohen’s brother who wrote the music for the film Borat!) to write a symphonic work based on Kazakh folk music. The resulting Zere symphony along with some video clips can be found here: http://www.erranbaroncohen.com/zere-symphony/

My mother's first love is music, which is why I am so happy to find the works above to share with her. My first love is literature. Kazakhstani literature includes:

· The story of Kozy-Korpesh and Bayan Sulu, a love story well known and memorialized in Kazakhstan and discussed here: https://old.qazaqtv.com/en/programms/viewArchive?id=15523

· The Book of Words by Abai Kunanbaev: http://www.leneshmidt-translations.com/book_of_words_abai_kunanbaev_english/index.htm

· A poem by Olzhas Suleimenov: https://www.poetrytranslation.org/poems/any-liquid-poured-into-a-vessel

· Short stories and articles available through Words Without Borders: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/search/results/search&keywords=kazakh/

Kazakhstan has also been showing up in world literature classes since One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This book, about a work camp of the Stalin era in Soviet Kazakhstan, can probably be found in your local library and the movie is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqG1uwhTX2o. More information on the Soviet impact on Kazakhstan can be found in:

· A lecture given at the Library of Congress on The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNGHagc5tQ8

· The documentary The Polygon, about nuclear testing in Kazakhstan, on Kanopy

· A Nuclear Threat Initiative summary of the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Watch the video to learn about the conversion away from missile silos to the world’s most active international space port: https://www.nti.org/learn/facilities/466/

· The Dark Tourist episode on “The Stans” covering nuclear testing and the space race, available on Netflix (season 1, episode 4)

Movies, TV shows and documentaries that cover Kazakhstan include:

· The movie Warriors of the Steppe. As you can tell from the title, there is violence here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9Igc33qoAA

· The movie Tulpan that I haven't watched yet, but I will be picking it up from Los Angeles County Library. It is well rated and I am intrigued by the Wikipedia story about how it was made.

· Two TV series on Amazon Prime: The Father and The Sun Is In You. Both look interesting and the actors have good charisma. Unfortunately, although they say they have English subtitles, I’m struggling to turn them on. Is anyone else succeeding?

· The First Horse Warriors on PBS theorizes that the people of what is now Kazakhstan may have been the first to capture and ride horses: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/first-horse-warriors/

· The documentary The Botany of Desire on Amazon Prime that notes the huge variety of apples growing wild in Kazakhstan, leading to the theory that this is the original home of this delicious fruit. I would take a trip to Kazakhstan just to wander around the wild apple forests!

If you are looking for more movies, check out the Kazakh film directors profiled here: https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/4480/5-kazakh-film-directors-Omirbaev-Baizagin-Issabayeva-Turebaev-Yerzhanov

I haven’t found a restaurant for Kazakhstan yet, but I found recipes: http://www.foodbycountry.com/Kazakhstan-to-South-Africa/Kazakhstan.html including one for their national dish: https://www.internationalcuisine.com/kazakh-beshbarmak/

I also found a video profiling Denis Ten, a Kazakhstani figure skater https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFUnnXLCfyI and another one with one of his skating routines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndn_tZ9Q3GE

If you are planning a visit to Kazakhstan, here are some great places to visit: https://www.journalofnomads.com/places-to-visit-in-kazakhstan-tourism/

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It is always helpful to reach out to a local travel advisor. My favorite travel advisor is Kaitlin Darnell at Laura's Travel in Redlands. May the travel industry survive and thrive. May we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in Kazakhstan and throughout the world.

Photo credit: https://kalpak-travel.com/