Abstract
This article analyzes three recent music videos by several Kazakh1 popular musicians: the multinational artist Batyrkhan Shukenov, the ethno-pop band Urker, and the young dombra (two-string lute) virtuoso Asylbek Engsepov. These videos, all produced since 2002, reflect varying degrees of historical nostalgia and nationalism through music and images of Kazakh traditional culture, creating powerful messages of Kazakh national identity for contemporary audiences in Kazakhstan. Drawing upon historian Ronald Gregor Suny's concept of a national “narrative” and Svetlana Boym's notion of “restorative nostalgia,” the article interrogates the types of images used and the reactions that they inspire in their audiences. The article examines not only issues of national identity construction and musical nation-building, but also probes the political motivations and implications of state involvement in the propagation of Kazakh musical nationalism in a multicultural, post-Soviet Kazakhstan. [1] Note on Romanization: I have transliterated all Kazakh-language terminology according to conventions most commonly used in English-language publications, versus the outdated Library of Congress system that has become too cumbersome for the modern scholar. I have transliterated the words “Kazakh” and “Kazakhstan” from the Russian-language terms kazakh (κaзax) and Kazakhstan (κaзaxctah) because these versions are more familiar to general readers.
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