The concept of folk music (traditional music, musical folklore) is relative in its genesis. It emerged only when, in the process of societal evolution and its artistic culture, highly professional forms of individual creativity developed, gaining the status of academic art. In European countries, these forms were established by a number of social institutions, including specialized educational establishments (conservatories, academies). From the need to relate these professional and specialized forms to forms of "unartificial" musical creativity, to delineate and at the same time connect them as two stages, as a foundation and a superstructure — it is from this need and at this relatively high stage of cultural development that the concept of folklore appeared.
Music can be called a special form of collective memory of the people, uniting all its generations. It is a crucial condition for the formation of national character, a means of realizing the uniqueness of the people, and a solid foundation for expanding horizons in a multi-national world.
Folk music, along with other types of folklore, reflects all aspects of life — from utilitarian to spiritual. It embodies ancient and modern representations of people about the surrounding world, their beliefs and aspirations, an eternal yearning for beauty, and an intuitive sense of measure.
...The folk melodies are as transparent as the air of Ala-Too. The magical incantations and their material copies — the protective "tumars" — are concise. The precise komuz playing is inseparable from the image of the galloping argymak. The colorful fabric "terme" is tightly woven by the hands of folk artisans, and the akyn's "terme" is a recitative. Its voice can be found in the stone "pages" of the rock "epos" of the Saymaluu-Tash valley, in the rhythmic ornamentation of the carpets "shyrdaks"...
From these and other parallels, the most important properties of the four musical genre layers of Kyrgyz folklore arose: the emotional sincerity of the melodies, the intonational energy of epic storytelling, the contemporary sound of akyn compositions, and the brilliant mastery of instrumental performers. And everywhere — boundless possibilities for improvisation.
The roots of Kyrgyz folk musical culture go deep into antiquity. The musical and poetic traditions of the Kyrgyz have transformed over many centuries under the influence of internal and external factors, while retaining their original artistic specificity. Collectively, these traditions formed a certain system of national musical creativity — the musical folklore of the Kyrgyz, which is carefully preserved and transmitted in the ethnic environment from generation to generation.
Not only creativity but also perception in musical folklore is traditional: listener associations have formed here into a stable system. At the same time, nowhere else is the combination of conscious and spontaneous, stable and mobile, momentary and eternal as flexible as in folklore.
Musical folklore historically reflects the following major periods of development of the national culture of the Kyrgyz. In the most ancient era, primary types and forms of vocal and instrumental creativity were primarily formed. In the feudal era, alongside already existing genres, epic creativity developed. In the modern era, due to the expansion of external contacts in cultural development, the renewal of all parameters of national musical folklore comes to the forefront.
By territorial-stylistic criteria, Kyrgyz folk music is divided into two major regions — southern and northern (see map on p. 11). Each of them has its own historically established ethno-artistic traditions, formed in specific socio-cultural conditions. The southern part of Kyrgyzstan encompasses two modern regions — Osh and Jalal-Abad. Its ancient tribal name is "ichkilik," or "bulgachi." The northern part unites four regions — Chui, Talas ("sol kanat" — "left wing"), Issyk-Kul, and Naryn ("ot kanat" — "right wing").
The musical culture of each region of the republic, in turn, is subdivided into internal folklore dialects. In this case, dialects refer to local folk song, instrumental, and storytelling traditions that are spread across various geographical zones of Kyrgyzstan and differ from each other by characteristic features.
It is necessary to study folk musical creativity as a historically developing system, consisting of diverse interrelated, hierarchically correlated links-genres. Here, a genre refers to a specific type of folkloric works that are typified in terms of content and style, which is born by a collective or an individual creator, stabilizes in a mass or professional environment, and develops through the selection and transformation of means in the interaction of traditions.
In Kyrgyz folk music, there are two major interacting layers — the mass (folk) and the professional. Mass musical folklore is the creativity of the broadest masses of the population with its more or less musically capable individuals. Professional folklore is a special social layer of folk musical culture that stands above the first in terms of performance and compositional mastery and has a specialized character. A representative of the professional oral tradition in the people is called "el shayyry."
As an untempered, predominantly monodic culture, Kyrgyz folk music is characterized by the uniqueness of modal systems, richness of rhythmic scales, and original timbre. Hence, the intonational and acoustic specificity of vocal and instrumental polyphony. The principle of oral improvisation leads to the fact that in folklore the concept of the system of modal, rhythmic, and syntactic structure is quite relative. It is created in the act of performance, formed depending on the content and practical purpose of the song or tune. At the same time, "folklore is rich in stereotypes of rhythm, pitch, and compositional schemes, and the memory of oral art often clings to such clichés through 'reflexes' of style."
The concept of Kyrgyz musical folk creativity is revealed in its own terminological apparatus. In folkloric terms, a thousand-year life and artistic experience of the people is compressed. Therefore, they are characterized, on the one hand, by specificity and objectivity, and on the other — by polysemy and symbolism. Folk terminology, from the perspective of modern science, is not as detailed, but it accurately reflects the oral improvisational nature of musical folklore.
The terminological lexicon of modern folklore studies is based on the folk system of knowledge about music. In addition, it operates with concepts from historical and theoretical musicology. Thus, we are dealing with two terminological systems — folk and scientific. Each of them has its own characteristics, which often makes it difficult for them to connect with each other due to objective and subjective reasons. Therefore, the inertia of academic, Eurocentric musical representations regarding folklore does not fully apply.
The absence of folk definitions concerning certain musical genres, expressive means, etc., is compensated in Kyrgyz folklore studies and in this manual by similar (but not identical!) concepts borrowed from Russian-European music science. For example, aeolian mode, dotted rhythm, theme, variation. It seems reasonable to assert this also because there is no insurmountable boundary between these, such different systems of musical thinking. They have different cultural-historical contexts but share a common sound material.
Thus, musical folklore is that natural part of culture that is created and lives in oral (non-written) form in a specific ethnic environment, responding to its immediate need for sound expression of feelings, thoughts, images, and moods of each individual and society as a whole. It is part of the artistic creativity of a particular society (clan, tribe, nation, people). It is the beginning of beginnings and the basis for the development of all other specialized forms of musical activity. And for this reason, mastering knowledge related to musical folklore and understanding its profound aesthetic values should be considered one of the most important tasks in the education of a musician.
