Confrontation in and through the Nation in Kazakh Aitys Poetry

Abstract

Despite a climate of authoritarianism and heavy censorship of independent media and political opposition in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, Kazakh aitys akhyndar (improvisational poets) have emerged as a voice of sociopolitical critique. In excerpts analyzed here, poets speaking as and for the xalykh (Kazakh people) berated contemporary Kazakhstani leaders as greedy, impotent, and russified. This article examines how poets' successful critique was made possible and protected by the conflictive and collaborative nature of poets' dialogues, by the legitimacy of aitys as "authentic Kazakh culture" as a result of folklorization processes, and by the collusion of the tradition's sponsors, members of the country's political elite. (Kazakh aitys, poetic dialogism, accountability in performance, post-Soviet nationalisms, cultural sponsorship, folklorization, Central Asian media, post-Soviet political critique).j ola_1051 101..115 Poetry and CriticismK azakh aitys, improvisational poetry, is one of the many oral and musical traditions linking Turkey across the Eurasian steppe to Mongolia and China. Literally meaning "shared talk," aitys refers both to a genre and to a competitive performance in which at least two characters or personae pit their words and wits toward victory, leaving their opponent trumped, sometimes literally speechless, without words. A victory is also marked by the use of solu suzder (beautiful words) and adaly suzder (ancestors' words), words and phrases that demonstrate knowledge of previous cultural texts, that employ metaphor, and that characterize a situation precisely, to great effect. Aitys is always performed in front of an audience, and by tradition it is audience approval that ultimately decides the winner. Aitys is always a dialogue (Zharmukhamedoly 2001:26). One poet may voice both personae, but it is much more typical for two poets to engage in a verbal duel (as defined by Pagliai, this issue).This article explores how, due to (1) processes of folklorization, (2) elite sponsorship, and (3) the conflictive and dialogic nature of the poetry itself, aitys has become a vehicle of sociopolitical critique in Kazakhstan. For the last 20-odd years, a national network of culture producers, including formerly high-ranking members of the socialist intelligentsia and communist party elite, 1 as well as members of the current president's inner circle, has established a regular series of performances across the country (and in the Kazakh diaspora of neighboring countries) which attract audiences of hundreds and which are typically televised on a national station. 2 Unlike regular holiday performances at the regional level, funded by monies channeled from the state government as they were during the Soviet period, the new national network has relied primarily on independent sponsors for its livelihood. In an otherwise authoritarian environment of repression and censorship, poets have

Transforming Mongolian Wedding Speech Genres in Bilingual Bicultural Urban Inner Mongolia

“…The rigidity and malleability of traditional genre render it an effective medium to negotiate rapidly changing social and political relations. Verbal art can act as a vehicle of socio‐political critique (Dubuisson 2010) and reflexively engage with ongoing social crisis (McDowell 2012). That traditional expressive cultural forms partake in pressing national and global health campaigns is shown in my study on the transforming Mongolian fiddle stories during the fight against Covid‐19 in Inner Mongolia, China (Baioud, 2020).…”

Mapping Participant Frameworks in the Aitys of Birzhan and Sara

“…These three dimensions of their social “voices” are typically established in the early stages of performance, and once ratified, allow poets to each blend these identities into one unified and legitimated role. It is precisely that unification, “embedding” of voice, or “the layering of multiple actors in a single utterance” and the resultant “interdependency of roles” (Hanks 1996, 169) which allows poets to enter properly into the discursive positionalities of the poetic form to find the embodied persona from which to “speak” with one another (Kaz: aitysu ), and which creates the cultural authority of that dialogic speaking voice (Dubuisson 2010). Such layering by aitys poets is helpfully seen as a “role alignment” between voice(s) and social personae, whereby performances become events, in which “characterological figures indexed by speech … establish some footing or alignment with figures performed through speech, and hence with each other” (Agha 2005, 40; Agha 2007), and intertextual gaps such as time can be overcome in their dialogue.…”

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“…Genre innovation is a key response for negotiating rapidly changing social and political relations (Hanks 1987;Turino 1984). Contemporary Kazak improvisational poetry, for instance, is an ideologically charged site where poets actively take part in the redefinition of Kazak culture and nation under the patronage of rival politicians (Dubuisson 2010). In this context, verbal art acts as a vehicle of sociopolitical critique as Kazak nationalism and political stratification loom large.…”

“…Capturing such persisting and evolving aspect of genres Bakhtin (1986:87) argues genres "correspond to conventional speech communication, typical themes, and, consequently, also to particular contacts between the meanings of words and actual concrete reality under certain typical circumstances". The conception of genres as conventional cultural expression and simultaneously the products of socio-historical and living circumstances (Bauman 2004;Hanks 1987:250) lies at the heart of this article, which explores how a traditional Mongolian art form, khuuriin ülger ('fiddle story') has become a vehicle of health communication and socio-political commentary in the ongoing global fight against The traditional Mongolian khuurch ('storytellers, bards') who recite great cycles of stories with the acoustic accompaniment of a four-stringed fiddle fall in the category of peripatetic bards that once flourished in many parts of the world (Finnegan 1977), such as the reciters of great poetry and stories during the Arab Empire in the ninth and tenth century (Hourani 1991), today's Kazakh aitys akhyndar ('improvisational poets') (Dubuisson 2010), or Tuscan Contrasto ('verbal duel') poets (Pagliai 2002). Like these, Mongolian khuurch not only entertain, but may also serve as comedians, satirists, religious proselytizers, or political propagandists (Hangin 1988:69-70).…”