Uzbek is a Karluk Turkic language spoken by Uzbeks. It is the official and national language of Uzbekistan and formally succeeded Chagatai, an earlier Karluk language also known as Turki, as the literary language of Uzbekistan in the 1920s.
The Kyrgyz people are a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia. They primarily reside in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and China. A Kyrgyz diaspora is also found in Russia, Tajikistan, and Kazakhstan. They speak the Kyrgyz language, which is the official language of Kyrgyzstan.
The Kazakhs are a Turkic ethnic group native to Central Asia and Eastern Europe. There are Kazakh communities in Kazakhstan's border regions in Russia, northern Uzbekistan, northwestern China, western Mongolia and Iran. The Kazakhs arose from the merging of various medieval tribes of Turkic and Mongolic origin in the 15th century.
Turkmen is a Turkic language of the Oghuz branch spoken by the Turkmens of Central Asia. It has an estimated 4.3 million native speakers in Turkmenistan, and a further 719,000 speakers in northeastern Iran and 1.5 million people in northwestern Afghanistan, where it has no official status. Turkmen is also spoken to lesser varying degrees in Turkmen communities of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan and by diaspora communities, primarily in Turkey and Russia.
Music of Kazakhstan refers to a wide range of musical styles and genres deriving from Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan is home to the Kazakh State Kurmangazy Orchestra of Folk Instruments, the Kazakh State Philharmonic Orchestra, the Kazakh National Opera and the Kazakh State Chamber Orchestra. The folk instrument orchestra was named after Kurmangazy Sagyrbayuly, a well-known composer and dombra player from the 19th century.
The music of Uzbekistan has reflected the diverse influences that have shaped the country. It is very similar to the music of the Middle East and is characterized by complicated rhythms and meters. Because of the long history of music in the country and the large variety of music styles and musical instruments, Uzbekistan is often regarded as one of the most musically diverse countries in Central Asia.
The Epic of Manas is a lengthy and traditional epic poem of the Kyrgyz people of East and Central Asia. Versions of the poem which date to the 19th century contain historical events of the 18th century, though Kyrgyz tradition holds it to be much older. Manas is said to be based on Bars Bek, the first khagan of the Kyrgyz Khaganate. The plot of Manas revolves around a series of events that coincide with the history of the region, primarily the interaction of the Kyrgyz people with other Turkic, Mongolic and Chinese peoples.
Magtymguly Pyragy, born Magtymguly, was an Iranian-Turkmen spiritual leader, philosophical poet, Sufi and traveller, who is considered the most famous figure in Turkmen literary history.
Bruno Nettl was an American ethnomusicologist and academic of Czech birth. As a central figure of ethnomusicology, Nettl's research interests varied widely. He wrote on music of the Blackfoot people, Iran, Southern India and particularly the scope and methods of ethnomusicology as a discipline. His lengthy teaching-career centered on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where his many students included Stephen Blum and Philip V. Bohlman.
The musical traditions of Central Asia mirror the immense diversity found in the cultures and populations residing in the region. Principal instrument types are two- or three-stringed lutes, the necks either fretted or fretless; fiddles made of horsehair; flutes, mostly sige at both ends and either end-blown or side-blown; and jew harps, mostly metal. Percussion instruments include frame drums, Tam origin of the bowed string Use of the bowed string is thought to originate with nomads who mainly used the snake-skin, covered horsetail-bowed lute. In Mongolia instruments like the morin khuur or horse-head fiddle survive today.
Ahmad Yasawi was a Turkic poet and Sufi, an early mystic who exerted a powerful influence on the development of Sufi orders throughout the Turkic-speaking world. Yasawi is the earliest known Turkic poet who composed poetry in Middle Turkic. He was a pioneer of popular mysticism, founded the first Turkic Sufi order, the Yasawiyya or Yeseviye, which very quickly spread over Turkic-speaking areas. He was a Hanafi scholar like his murshid, Yusuf Hamadani.
Following independence from the Soviet Union, a major economic depression cut "public financing" for education in Kazakhstan, "which dropped from 6% of gross domestic product in 1991 to about 3% in 1994, before rising to 4% in 1999. Elementary- and secondary-school teachers remain badly underpaid; in 1993 more than 30,000 teachers left education, many of them to seek more lucrative employment.
The kobyz or qobyz, also known as the kylkobyz, is an ancient Turkic bowed string instrument, spread among Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, Bashkirs, and Tatars. The Kyrgyz variant is called the kyl-kyiak).
The Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia was established in 2000 by His Highness the Aga Khan with the aim of assisting in the preservation of Central Asia's musical heritage by ensuring its transmission to a new generation of artists and audiences, both inside the region and beyond its borders. It is an initiative of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network.
Theodore Craig Levin is an American ethnomusicologist. He is a professor of music at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and earned his undergraduate degree at Amherst College and obtained his Ph.D. from Princeton University. Levin has focused his research on the people of the Balkans, Siberia, and Central Asia. His recordings from these regions have been released on various labels.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
The University of Central Asia (UCA) (Russian: Университет Центральной Азии) is a secular, non-profit, research university in Central Asia. It was founded by an international charter between the governments of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in partnership with the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in 2000. UCA's first undergraduate campus opened in 2016 in Naryn, Kyrgyzstan, and was followed by a second campus in Khorog, Tajikistan (2017). The University has three schools: School of Arts and Sciences (SAS), Graduate School of Development (GSD) and School of Professional and Continuing Education (SPCE). The School of Arts and Sciences offers four undergraduate programmes on its two campuses. A third campus in Tekeli, Kazakhstan is currently in the planning phase.
A bagshy is a professional Turkmen bard who devotes his or her life to memorizing and reciting historical epics, typically accompanied by the traditional two-stringed instrument known as the dutar. Bagshys have enjoyed great respect in Turkmen society as guardians of the culture, and since independence in 1991, they have received greater support from the government.
Turkmen literature comprises oral compositions and written texts in the Old Oghuz Turkic and Turkmen languages. The Turkmens are direct descendants of the Oghuz Turks, who were a western Turkic people, who formed the Oghuz branch of the Turkic language family.
Aida Huseynova was a musicologist, pianist, and ethnomusicologist from Azerbaijan.
