Book Review: Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Kyrgyz Republic published by UNESCO

 This book provides brief and interesting information about the Kyrgyz way of life. It starts with the Akyns. These were the Kyrgyz epic tellers who combine singing, improvisation and musical composition. They were the figures who participated in story telling contests. The pre-eminent Kyrgyz epic is the 1000-year-old Manas trilogy which is known for its length (16 times longer the Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey). The Kyrgyz epic trilogy of Manas,...

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Book Review: Cities of the Dead: The Ancestral Cemeteries of Kyrgyzstan by Nasser Rabbat, Elmira Kochumkulova and Altyn Kapalova

 I learn from this book that the Kyrgyz territory was formally incorporated into the Russian Empire in 1876. In Kyrgyz tradition the living does not visit the graves of the dead. There is a popular Kyrgyz saying that ‘a Kyrgyz is born in the yurt and will die in the yurt.’ Yurt is the traditional home of the nomadic Kyrgyz people Due to Stalin’s sedentarization policy the Kyrgyz and the other nomadic peoples of Central Asia were forced to give...

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