Zira Nauryzbayeva: How Experimentation Is Possible in Traditional Culture

Before the famine, traditional Kazakh music was a living and evolving art form, one that embraced experimentation, play, and even absurdity. As early as the late 1990s, Talasbek Asemkulov drew parallels between the principles of traditional culture and postmodernism, finding many shared qualities.

In this lecture, Zira Nauryzbayeva, a scholar of Kazakh mythology, writer, translator, and PhD in philosophy, examines bold instances of experimentation within traditional creative practices and highlights some of the most fascinating figures in Kazakh musical art.