The musical soul of Kazakhstan

Young people in Kazakhstan are keeping their culture alive with pop-up dombra parties - an intriguing combination of modern flash- mobbing and an instrument that has been played for possibly more than 4000 years.

The young players of this traditional Kazakh instrument use social media to arrange impromptu pop-ups in public venues, and a more formal dombra party has been held in the National Academic Library of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

They are committed to orchestrating a resurgence of the dombra, a two or three-stringed musical instrument, usually with a wooden body, frets of gut tied around the neck, and traditionally with horsehair strings, which runs through the history of Kazakhstan.

It has often been said that the dombra contains the soul of the Kazakh people.

It is plucked, unlike the kobyz, which is also two-stringed but played with a bow, making sounds that eerily mimic the wind, a wolf crying in the night, or swans, winging in and then chorusing together.

The Museum of Folk Musical Instruments in the Kazakh city of Almaty collects and displays these instruments of "sacred melody which flew down and across the mountains and steppes", as the young guide describes it.

One dombra was made in the 13th century, with a solid body carved from one piece of wood.

Another room is full of instruments played by famous Kazakh dombra composers and players, particularly from the Middle Ages and particularly that of Sugur Aliuly, who was born in 1882.

The music they wrote for dombra, called kuis, are said to have taken their form at the beginnings of ritual worship acts of nomad tribes. They were passed from generation to generation by ear and never written down.

A petroglyph in the Maitobe region, near Almaty, has been dated to the Neolithic period and is believed to place the making and playing of the first dombra in Central Asia to more than 4000 years ago.

Yet today, many Kazakh family homes still have one and at least one person can play it.

And among the young, a resurgence of interest and commitment to Kazakh culture is partly manifesting in dombra playing.

The name Almaty means "rich with apples", and today it is a garden city, with many gardens and parks. And in those parks, youngsters sit clustered on benches with their smart phones and electronic tablets, tuned in to the world - a generation seemingly in contrast to those who grew up here when this was part of the Soviet Union, before the Soviet collapse in 1991 and the country's subsequent independence as one of the 15 former Soviet republics.

They have watched Russia's invasion of eastern Ukraine and heard Russian President Vladimir Putin's recent comments Kazakhstan must remain within the Russian world, threats about succession issues when Kazakhstan's 74-year-old president Nursultan Nazarbayev is no longer in charge, and a reminder of the lack of Kazakhstan's historic legitimacy.

In the days that followed, young Kazakhs expressed their opposing views and through these pop-up dombra parties, they are reasserting their culture. After all, the very word "Kazakh" means "a free and independent nomad" in ancient turkic language.

A well-educated young Kazakh tells me quite simply: "We don't want to join the Russian Union."

He adds: "For 70 years during Soviet times we started losing language and culture."

• LANDLOCKED *

Encyclopaedia Britannica and Guinness World Records recognise Kazakhstan as the world's biggest landlocked country - a country with no border access to the open ocean.

And Kazakhstan covers 2.7 million sqkm - the ninth biggest country in the world.

But Almaty, which once functioned as the capital for the whole of Central Asia, doesn't feel big. It's a manageable, walkable city - safe and pleasant, and framed by the peaks of the Tian Shan mountains, which are snow capped even on this hot summer's day.

After a cable car ride to Kok Tube Hill, there is lunch and a chance to sit in mountain air, before returning to the great comfort of the five-star Rixos Hotel in Almaty.

With oil and mineral wealth, Kazakhs love their Porsches, Toyotas and Subarus - while in the country, they plant wheat before the snow comes, ready for spring, and there's mostly an aged mix of Soviet-era vehicles.

For thousands of years, up to the 20th century, Kazakhs were nomads. They had shaman beliefs before Islam arrived in the 10th century, and there are still echoes of shamanism.

Even in ancient times, women were liberated, says Ulan Ermekov, who is showing us around. "It was a liberal culture in ancient times. Women even wore trousers, to sit on a horse and fight and defend the children when the men were away."

In the villages, life has hard, particularly after the Soviet collapse in 1991, when the system and supports they were used to vanished.

• MAKING FRIENDS *

And so I stroll the streets of Almaty a little and see the youngsters on the benches in the park and end up in a coffee lounge.

Kazakh might be this country's first language, and Russian its official language, but the young man next to me strikes up conversation in English.

"Hello." He nods.

"Hello." I nod back. "Salemetsiz be," thinking he might have exhausted his English, as I have just exhausted my Kazakh.

"Where are you from," he asks politely.

"Australia."

"Have you seen anything good in Almaty," he asks.

I tell him I most certainly have. I have walked through the central Panfilov Park, which is full of oak trees and has small timber and glass cases with books that can be taken out, read in the park and replaced.

I have been impressed by beautiful Zenkov Cathedral (the Cathedral of the Ascension) still in that park, and watched a commemoration service for those who died in the Siege of Leningrad (complete with band music and high-stepping soldiers) - but most of all, I have savoured a visit to the Museum of Folk Musical Instruments, on the edge of the park.

"Ah," says the young man, who later introduces himself as Nurik Omarov.

"Did you see the dombra?" I most certainly did, I say.

"I play dombra," he says grandly and with pride - the emphasis on the I. "We do pop-up dombra parties, you know . . ."

• fact file *

·Stephen Scourfield spent time in Kazakhstan as part of the Five Stans tour by Travel Directors. The Five Stans is one of Travel Directors' newest tours, visiting Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The next departure is from May 3-May 30 and the 28-day tour costs from $13,950 per person twin share. This includes all flights between Australia and Kazakhstan/ Turkmenistan and back, all internal flights in Central Asia, all accommodation, the vast majority of meals, highlights and surprises, Travel Directors' tour leader, local guides, visas and gratuities. traveldirectors.com.au, 137 Cambridge Street, Leederville, 1300 856 661 and 9242 4200.

·China Southern Airways flies direct between Perth and Guangzhou and connects with 190 destinations in 40 countries, offering full service flying at low-cost prices. Visit csair.com.au or call 1300 889 628 during business hours. Its office is open at suite 4, level 2, 3 De Vlamingh Avenue (off Adelaide Terrace), East Perth from 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday, or ask travel agents.

Stephen Scourfield was a guest of Travel Directors and China Southern Airways.