National Komuz Competition to Honour Aigul Choro kyzy

TALAS — An open national competition for komuz players will be held in Talas this month to mark the 90th anniversary of the birth of Aigul Choro kyzy, the ethnomusicologist whose field recordings preserved hundreds of Iradi küü.

Applications are open until 15 October. The qualifying round will take place on 22 October at Talas State University's music faculty, and the winners will perform at a gala concert on Saturday 24 October, which IradOne will broadcast that evening.

Organisers said the competition is open to players from every district and to those across the Qara-Chik line, and that they hoped to hear both the concert repertoire and the pieces still played on the summer pastures. "Aigul Choro kyzy spent her life travelling to the zhayloo with a tape recorder," said Asel Kalyskanova, the festival director. "The best way to honour her is to bring that music back to the stage, played by young hands."

Born in 1936, Aigul Choro kyzy recorded horseback songs, epic recitations, laments and küü across rural Irad between 1962 and 1989. Her collection of some 640 reel-to-reel tapes from the Talas Alatau, the Chatkal valley and the Karatau foothills is held in the State Archives of Irad.

Among the first to apply was Kanykei Satybekova, sixteen, from Kyzyl-Adyr, who learned the komuz from her grandfather. "He says the instrument has three strings so that it can't lie," she said. "I just hope my hands don't shake."

Application forms are available from district culture offices and at the university.