Voice of the steppe: Kazakh poet Zhambyl Zhabayev was born 175 years ago

Voice of the steppe. Kazakhstan celebrates the 175th anniversary of the birth of the poet and singer Zhambyl Zhabayev. He praised both the ancient heroes and his contemporaries. And during the Great Patriotic War he wrote the poem “Leningraders, my children.” The country's philharmonic society is named after him, and a museum is located in the village where he lived. Kirill Kharlamov, correspondent of MIR 24 TV channel, will tell about the folk poet.

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“When I was 25” is one of the most heartfelt works of Zhambyl Zhabayev. Discourses about life, written in old age. Zhambyl was born in the middle of the 19th century into the family of a poor nomad. At 14 he left home to devote his life to singing. Dombra became his life companion.

“Zhambyl-ata studied with the mullah as a child, he knew a little Arabic, but he could neither read nor write. And about the significance of the dombra in his life, he himself said well: “Without a pen and without ink, the song sounded ringing. For me, a dombra, my songstress, replaced a sheet of paper, “Zhambyl Zhabayev's granddaughter Saltanat Zhambylova quotes his grandfather.

Among the Kazakhs, he became famous after participating in aitys – musical competitions of dombra speakers. Thanks to the phenomenal memory of Zhabayev, hundreds of folklore works were recorded in the republic: epics and epics of the Kazakh steppe.

“Over the years, his consciousness did not grow dim, his memory was not lost – everything went on for him only incrementally. An example of this: being far over 90 years, from 1936 to 1941, a man of age, he created more than ten thousand epic lines, ”said the soloist of the Kazakh National Philharmonic. Zhambyla Zhabayeva Yerzhan Alimbetov.

“For his contribution to the national culture, the government of the Kazakh SSR presented the poet with an M-1 car for his 75th birthday. In those years, there were only six of them in the Union republic. It was originally black, but it was repainted blue during a major renovation. We recently kicked her out of the garage, she is still on the move. “

All-Union recognition to Zhambyl came quite late: in 1936, a decade of Kazakh art and literature took place in Moscow. And the 90-year-old akyn with dombra became a sensation. For the authorities, he is a colorful representative of a multinational country, and the people understand his work. In his works, he praised Stalin and party leaders, the successes of heroes and workers.

“It was necessary in the near future to find such a model to confirm the correctness of the thesis that Soviet culture is national in form, but socialist in content. When the Soviet government called him into its ranks, he was already 70 years old, that is, he was already an elderly person who had lived a long life, ”said Saltanat Asanova, Candidate of Historical Sciences.

And during the war years he wrote the famous poem “Leningraders, my children.”

“Leningraders, my children! Leningraders, my pride! In the stream of the steppe stream I can see the reflection of the Neva stream. “

This work helped the inhabitants of Leningrad to endure the difficulties of the blockade. For the poet, the Great Patriotic War became a personal tragedy – his son Algadai went missing.

“War, shells, bombs explode, and I look – there is a crowd of people. I get closer, look – and there is a newsstand, can you imagine? A newspaper is sold there, where his poem is printed, and people, fearing nothing, they stand in line and buy it. They buy in the queue a newspaper where Zhambyl Zhabayev's poem is printed, ”recalls Zhambyl Zhabayev's granddaughter Saltanat Zhambylova.

Many of the akyn's works are still relevant, therefore in Kazakhstan they are taught in schools. In every city there is a street or state institution named after the poet.

In 1941, Zhambyl Zhabayev was awarded the Stalin Prize. She was awarded for outstanding work in art and literature. The laureates were personally approved by Joseph Stalin.