Overview of the documentary film "The first audio recording of Kazakh music. Road of people"

Kazakh traditional music has been the research object for many scientists from Russia, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Japan, the United States, and other countries. In the 20th century, due to the establishment of Soviet power, the territory of Kazakhstan was closed for research by foreigners. Simultaneously, such a combination of events contributed to preserving materials collected before the Great October Socialist Revolution. Therefore, today it is vital for the World and Kazakh ethnomusicology to consider unknown materials and scientific sources. Various foreign archives contain materials unknown to Kazakh ethnomusicologists about Kazakh traditional music collected on researchers’ and traveler’s expeditions since the end of the XVIII century. Recordings of the German ethnographer-anthropologist R. Karutz were found in 2016 by the film crew of the Interstate TV and Radio Company “Mir”, and analyzed and published by the doctor of Art studies S. I. Utegalieva in the book” Turkestan collection of songs and instrumental pieces collected by R. Karutz (1905)”. These recordings prove that there are sources about Kazakh traditional music that can change the opinion about the historical significance of the Kazakh culture in the Central Asian region. The famous turcologist Efim Rezvan presented the records in the Pushkin Museum in St. Petersburg. It turned out that the original cylinders with authentic recordings are currently stored in the archive of the Berlin Museum of Visual Anthropology and Ethnology. This article reviews the documentary film "Road of People: The First Audio Recording of Kazakh Music", and sheds light on the possible prospects of studying the problem of research the Kazakh traditional music. Today, the Berlin Phonogram Archive contains samples of music from all over the world, the first recording dates back to 1900. The collection of wax cylinders by Richard Karutz is kept in the Department of Ethnomusycology, Visual Anthropology at the Berlin Phonogram Archive of the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. The collection is well preserved, and according to its curator Dr. Ricarda Kopal, there are 16 wax cylinders from Turkestan, an area of ​​now southern Kazakhstan, which R. Karuts crossed during his expedition. The film crew brought digital copies of the recordings to Almaty for further study. Kazakh and international scientists and performers, professors and doctors of sciences: S. Utegalieva, T. Togzhanov, A. Berdibay (Kazakhstan), I. Saurova (Karakalpak Autonomous Republic), R. Abdullaev (Uzbekistan) and others were involved to decipher, analyze, describe and evaluate the musical and artistic content of the recordings. The whole process was documented in the film, which was worked on by a whole team of professional journalists, the script was written by Timur Sandybaev and Askar Alimzhanov, directed by Kanat Yessenamanov.