What’s in my iTunes: Popular music in Kazakhstan

In Kazakhstan I've found that music fills a critical void in my life, mainly because it has helped me retain what little sanity I have left. Whenever things get a bit too much, a couple of hours listening to music calms me down.

Many of my favorite memories over the past two years involve music. The night I was sworn in as a volunteer, I bonded with the Kaz 19s near Taldykorgan by singing along to old school music videos on MTV piped in from Russia and drinking beer. Other memories regarding music also pop into my mind: impromptu dance parties in my host family’s living room, listening to traditional Kazakh songs on the dombra during Naruyz, and having musical adventures in Taldykorgan by rocking out in a bar until 3am.

I’ve found music to be a great way to foster cultural exchange. Many youth in Kazakhstan like rap and can name at least one American rapper (usually Tupac or Jay-Z), yet get really interested when I start talking about the *other* American musical forms, like jazz, the blues, and even (god forbid) country. Over the past 2 years I’ve also found music to be an easy way to practice Russian and Kazakh on my own. I’ve even taken a liking to Kazakh rap/R&B, and Russian pop. I’ve found that looking up lyrics and matching them with my dictionary is a good way to learn some new words.

So what have I been listening to over the past two years? What’s hot in Kazakhstan? Here are three groups/artists that enjoy a fair bit of airplay in Kazakhstan and on my Itunes player:

5ivesta Family, "Зачем" (Why?)

Who they are: A pop group from Russia...became pretty popular in 2009

Why I like them: Their lyrics are easy enough to follow, and their songs usually have a “rap break” that’s pretty cool. Russian rap is my guilty pleasure. And their lead singer’s cute. My counterpart just shakes her head in shame whenever she catches me singing along, but I don’t care. In addition, they have a number in their name, and only the coolest people and musical groups can pull that off, like 311, Pope John Paul II, and Ochocinco.

What’s this video about?: This guy sees a woman, and falls in love with her. He keeps on giving her compliments, and gifts, and she accepts them but she won’t give him a definite answer to whether she feels anything toward him and usually will dance with him in the club, but he “goes home alone”. She doesn’t love anyone else, but keeps on kind of stringing him along because there’s no one else around. So the natural question to ask is “Why?", which is the title and the refrain of the song.

Russian pop: my guilty pleasure

Ерболат - "Мен Казакпын" (Yerbolat - I am Kazakh)

Who is he : Yerbolat is a Kazakh rapper/R&B singer, and is pretty popular all over Kazakhstan. Whenever I go to a school assembly, concert, ceremony, one of his songs is usually played as an intro. He even gets some airplay at weddings.

Why I like him: Yerbolat has figured out how to blend Kazakhstan’s old history with new beats, and makes it sound very cool in the process. Many of his songs feature the dombra and several other traditional instruments. He also raps frequently about Kazakhstan (and even follows the American rap music tradition of making fun of other regions in Kazakhstan…East Coast vs. West Coast anyone?), in Kazakh, the national language. Yerbolat also has some pretty intense music videos, including one which basically involves people fighting in a boxing ring, dog fights, and copious amounts of him and his crew firing machine guns in the air because that’s awesome. If you are into that sort of thing.

I’ve also heard that he’s originally from Taldykorgan, which is just further proof in my mind that Taldykorgan is the best city in Kazakhstan.

What’s the video about?: This music video shows the highlights of Kazakhstan’s history, with images of the old mosque in Turkestan, the Soviet takeovers and uprisings after the first world war, the first space flight (everyone knows that the Russians launched the first manned space flight. What people don’t know is that it was launched from Kazakh soil), nuclear tests and protests, the rise of Astana, and ends with some footage of Kazakh athletes in the Beijing Olympics. Yerbolot’s the guy with the microphone.

When I get back to America, and people ask me "what's Kazakhstan?" I think I'll just show them this video

Alexander Rubak “Fairytales”

Who is he: A wicked talented dude who is rumored to have a nasty mean streak behind stage. He was born in Belarus, but then moved to Norway. You can read more about him here.

Why I like him: This guy sings in English, but I don’t think I would have never heard of him unless I lived in Europe or Asia. He won Eurovison 2009 with the highest score ever, which is like "American Idol", except every country sends their best musical act. He plays the violin, and actually makes it look awesome (I’m not a violin fan, but he makes it look cool). I like his lyrics and his songs have a lot of energy, the type that makes people get up and dance in crazy circles, myself included. In my mind, he’s what Jack Johnson should have been if he was awesome.

What’s the video about: At this point, your English is probably better than mine. So sit back, listen, and figure it out.

Playing the violin has never looked so cool.

Musical Adventure?

From a letter to my little brother:

I have two cafes owners that will feed me if I play, but I only have a bari right now. I will try to figure out ways to get a different horn (that is not expensive)…probably an alto, because I found a store in Taldy Korgan which sells alto Rico reeds. And they are cheap: 100 tenge a reed: less than 1 dollar!

Anyway, here's the whole story:

In Kazakhstan, showing photos of yourself and family is a big deal. When I go “ghosting” (visiting or hanging out), the host usually brings out all of the pictures, and we look at all of them. I have some pictures of my family and friends that I always carry with me, and I show them to curious people. However, there is one picture that always captures their attention: It is my profile photo on this website and on Facebook. It is my favorite photo of myself, and it happens to have a saxophone in it. When people see this, they ask if I am a musician and if I brought a sax to Kazakhstan (which I didn’t, it’s too heavy). So, it circulated around the town very fast that I knew how to play the sax but I didn’t have one.

I then got a phone call from a local café owner that she found a sax and would like me to try it out. I was very surprised by this, because we never talked about this before. Nevertheless, I was curious and went to the café. The good news it was a working sax. The bad news was that it was too much sax: it was a bari.

Anyway, the café owner asked if I would play for a birthday party on Friday. Because I am a Peace Corps volunteer, I wouldn’t accept money, but playing for food suited me just fine (My host mom is the head cook there and she cooks very well). To make a long story shorter, I learned how the bari worked in two days (It has a low A key!), loaded up some backtracks that I kept from Neal, and played at the party. It went as well as it could given the circumstances (bari sax, 2 days practice after 4 months off, etc). Playing the bari sax in a solo manner was like trying to cut a hunk of cheese with a chainsaw, but we (bari and I) survived.

I disinfected the one reed that came with the sax by soaking it in super chlorinated water and cleaned out the rest of it as I was able. (the Peace Corps gives us water purification tablets, in which the main ingredient is cholrine. So I dumped in about 5x’s more than normal. It didn't warp the reed, although my host family thinks I am crazy)

I only played two songs, “The Nearness of You,” with a backtrack and a solo rendition of “Somewhere over the Rainbow”. It went well. Many of the guests (who had never heard a live saxophone) were very impressed and loved it. Lots of kisses on the cheek and handshakes ensued afterwards. The café owner asked me to play on new year’s eve, and I readily accepted, although I do not think that I will play now, mainly because I need a new cable to hook up my computer to the sound board. I do not like doing solo stuff on a bari. Too awkward, and a lot of the tricks I like to do (adderly trill, growling, alternate fingerings, ask Neal about these) sound kind of stupid on a bari.

This is not the end of my musical adventure. While I was at the café, I met the dj there, a man named Daoullete. He invited me over to his house for chai and a jam session, which he called “an experiment”. At first, I thought this was shady, so I asked my host mom if she thought this was creepy. In reality, Daoullete and my host mom are old friends, and his wife came to my birthday party. This is the advantage of working in a small town; networking is very easy. He said that he would call and we would play “later the next day”.

I woke up at 10am to Daoullete yelling my name in the living room. Evidently, he let himself in because the door was unlocked (this is common), and wanted to go now because he just called some friends in the area who happened to have an alto sax.

“Bari saxs are good for groups, but not by yourself.” he said in Russian. “You need an alto or tenor like your picture”. This surprised me, because not only he knew about my picture (I never showed him it), he knew that the bari wasn’t designed as a solo instrument. He then told me to get dressed and hurry because “we have experiments to do.” I went with him, wondering what type of character I was involving myself with and what a crazy musical adventure this is.

What ensued was us driving around Karabulak for an hour, knocking on random doors, (or just walking in) looking for the person with an alto sax. We never found him. We gave up for the time being, and went to his house where we had chai with his kids. Later we had a long jam session, where we used my back tracks.

I neglected to say what instrument Daoullete plays. He plays the guitar. Very well. He knows nothing about jazz, but has a great ear. I taught him a little bit about blues structure and chord changes, and we rocked just fine with the backtracks. Later, he taught me some Kazakh and Russian national songs that are very popular.

After this, we drove back to the café where he talked to the owner and told her to get me an alto or a tenor. I didn’t understand everything that was said, but I understood when he said that the bari was a “crisis”.

The next week he called me again, and said that he found a tenor sax, and if I wanted I could play at a café in Taldy Korgan, which is a small city nearby. I went there, and found that the sax was an old B&S model, made in Germany, and was very old. Don’t know too much about it (maybe Neal knows?) I remark on it only because it had a crazy wide open mouthpiece, so wide that I could only get notes above middle c. I once again disinfected with the chlorinated water, and then played without use of the low register. I thought it was disappointing, but the café owner loved it and said that if I could find a saxophone, I could play there anytime. In return, I would eat and drink all that I wanted (Peace Corps volunteers cannot play for money)

Anyway, that’s the saxophone story.

Happy New Year!

~Kyle