Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan, with an area of three million square kilometers, is a giant puzzle between the Urals, Siberia to the northeast and Russia. Dry steppes and deserts as far as the eye can see, only the edges of which are habitable and inhabited. This country is barred from east to west by two seas, the Caspian and the Aral, and by Lake Balkhash. Between these seas lies a stony and desert foothills whose valleys go down to one hundred and fifty meters below sea level. Let's bypass the Aral Sea and head south. We cross a succession of steppes, grassy or wooded, others dry and desert.

 

What the hell did the Russians do in this ungrateful country that sheltered the Mongol people? The idea came to Peter the Great to choose the land route to trade. In the 18th century, Tsarina Anna IVANOVNA negotiated with the “land of the Kazakhs”. Geopolitics will prove Peter the Great right since today, the only route to sell oil reserves is that of land and not that of the sea. 2,500 years ago this space was occupied by sedentary people. Nomadism appeared later, when herds became too abundant and new pastures had to be found. Then clans were born. Later, at the end of the 5th century, the Huns were in turn swept away by barbarian tribes coming from the north. We will thus arrive at the time of the Mongols and in particular of Genghis KHAN, in the 12th century. It was the time of the “Golden Horde”. To resist them, the Muscovites will join forces. In vain. But, in the 18th century, Russia imposed its law.

 

The national folklore ensemble “Naz” has visited many countries in Europe and Asia. Its folklore includes songs and music that are in harmony with tradition and its age-old human values. Through this musical culture, links persist between the different components of this country. As for the musical instruments, they are both rustic and strangely fine. We can see implicitly the age-old links of a culture inspired by horses, the sound of hooves and the wind of the steppes. The dances combine with great harmony the virile strength of horsemen who crossed Asia and Europe, as well as poetry, romantic feelings, the natural beauty of a country of wide open spaces.

 

Kazakh culture is also reflected in national silver jewelry, clothing so distinctive and recognizable that it is a true art. Both ancient and modern, it always and everywhere accompanies the lives of Kazakhs.

 

This people with a thousand-year-old past has never ceased to amaze us. From its origins, it has retained a taste of immensity, crazy dreams and courage that it has forged in a heritage of more than four thousand years of history. It carries within it a limitless change of scenery drawn from the sources of the immensities of grass and sand which are the setting of its history and its culture. He cannot forget the past traced by the Huns, these men who cooked meat under the saddle of their horses. He jealously guards the memory of these epic hordes which crossed space and time with their winged hooves.