The First Records of the Texts of the Epic "Manas"
Until now, we have mentioned those storytellers of "Manas" from whom no recordings were made. We now turn to the biographies of the second group of singers, from whom full-fledged recordings of the texts were made in a scientific context. The first of this group is Sagymbay Orozbakov. The great akyn (Chon akyn), as the people called him, was born in 1867 in the locality of Kabyra in the Issyk-Kul valley. His father was a mountaineer from the famous Kyrgyz khan Ormon. After the khan's death, the storyteller Orozbak moved to Kabyra, where he lived with his family until his own death. Sagymbay spent his life in Kochkorka. During the uprising, he, along with others, migrated to China and returned from there in 1917.
Before becoming a storyteller, Sagymbay worked in agriculture, herding sheep, sowing grain, etc. He began singing "Manas" at the age of 16-17, but even before that, he became known as a "composer" of lyrical and especially humorous songs. Becoming a manaschi, Sagymbay continued to create artistic works in other genres. He was a widely recognized composer of lament songs ("koshok"), as well as the author of the social-philosophical poem "Zaman," where he describes the difficult situation of the Kyrgyz people and tries to find a way out for them. In addition to this, Sagymbay was a great connoisseur of folk songs, which, unfortunately, were not recorded in his performance.
In general, Sagymbay was a person with a broad outlook, although he did not have a formal education. He could read in Arabic script and, being religious, was known among those around him for his knowledge of sharia.
Those who knew Sagymbay personally say that he was very concerned about the condition of the people, was dissatisfied with the tsarist regime, and sharply criticized the bai-manap. In this regard, his statements about Tsar Nicholas are quite characteristic. Once, among the population, there spread a rumor about an unusual dream, supposedly sent to the tsar: when the tsar was sitting on the throne, a ram appeared and, with a blow of its horn, knocked him to the ground. Interpreting this dream, Sagymbay declared that "when a ram attacked the tsar in a dream, it ended with a conspiracy of the kozhaman, and our tsar will also be overthrown not by other tsars, but from within, by his own."
Sagymbay was one of those fortunate representatives of the old generation of akyns who managed to see Soviet power. He welcomed it joyfully and began to openly speak out against the bai-manap nationalist elements.
The beginning of his creative activity, like that of all his predecessors, is again explained by a prophetic dream, but from the accounts of contemporaries, we know that even in his childhood, he was very interested in "Manas" and listened to the performances of almost all the famous manaschi of that time, including Keldibek and Balik. There is a legend that Keldibek, listening to the performance of the epic by Sagymbay, gave him instructions regarding the use of mimicry and gestures.
In the performance of Sagymbay, the first part of the trilogy was recorded, i.e., the songs about Manas himself. The recording began in 1922, at the request of the Narcompros of the Turkestan Republic, and was completed in 1926. Due to Sagymbay's illness, it was not possible to continue the recording.
Sagymbay's "Manas" consists of 260 pages and is one of the best works of Kyrgyz folklore. His variant, saturated with vivid battle episodes, masterfully describing social and domestic events and fantastic occurrences, is distinguished by high artistic quality of poetic style, but loses much due to the presence of foreign elements in the main idea of the epic of religious motifs and sometimes pan-Turkist sentiments. This abundance of religious elements in the variant can be explained by the fact that Sagymbay, being a religious man, emphasized the corresponding motifs in the epic.
From those who knew Sagymbay and from his personal statements, it is known that he always tried to reflect the history in the epic as fully as possible. Having neither special education nor access to literature, he collected interesting data through conversations with "learned" people, but, of course, could not critically rework the information received. It has now been established that some Kyrgyz nationalists, taking advantage of Sagymbay's particular attention to historical facts, under the guise of "consultations," instilled in him pan-Turkist views. At their suggestion, Sagymbay, for example, included separate stanzas in his songs about the struggle of Manas with Ilya Muromets and even with Napoleon. However, these were separate episodes, not connected with the plot, which could not influence the content of the epic as a whole.
Sagymbay died in 1930 in Kochkorka.
Storytellers of "Manas," from whom no recordings were made