KORKUT2026

Rites
of Eternal Wind

Il Korkut Sonic Arts Triennale

Dedicated to sound and listening, the Triennale creates a space for a wide range of sonic practices without restricting them by institutional boundaries. Over the course of two months, Rites of Eternal Wind will host sound installations and live events, listening sessions and soundwalks, hybrid lectures, discussions and workshops, somatic performances and explorations of sonic rituals and environments where sound is absent or even impossible.

Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture

Raushan Orazbay

Raushan Orazbay (b. 1973) is a kui performer and baqsy, and a virtuoso of the qobyz. Her exceptional talent revealed itself in early childhood: at the age of ten she entered the Republican Kazakh Specialized Music Boarding School for Gifted Children named after A. K. Zhubanov in Almaty, where her first mentor was the renowned master and connoisseur of qobyz music Abdymanap Zhumabekuly. After graduating, Raushan continued her studies at the Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory, specializing in traditional music, and later completed postgraduate studies there under the same Zhumabekuly.

Over nearly three decades of artistic activity, Orazbai has worked as a soloist and accompanist with the Folk Music Ensemble of the Presidential Orchestra, as a senior lecturer at the Kurmangazy Conservatory, and as an associate professor in the Qobyz department at the Kazakh National University of Arts in Astana. She has trained an entire generation of talented musicians, including Kurmanbek Olzhas, Sandzhar Almishev, and others.

To introduce audiences to the spiritual heritage of the steppe, Raushan Orazbay has interpreted and adapted for the qobyz traditional works by Korkyt and Ikhlas, as well as well-known pieces such as Sugir’s “Ilme,” “Kosbasar,” “Togyz Tarau,” “Mayda Konyr,” and “Karatau,” Tattimbet’s “Kyrmyzy Kosbasar,” Zhappas Kalambaev’s “Zhumen,” and Nurgisa Tlendiev’s “Akku.” Most of her innovative playing techniques have today become canonical.

Raushan has given solo concerts in Turkey, Iran, Malaysia, France, Italy, England, Spain, the Netherlands, Japan, Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and India. She has also conducted masterclasses and lecture-performances at leading institutions worldwide, including the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Harvard University, the Boston Conservatory, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Swan Song / Akqular Sazy
‍Concert

Traditionally, the qobyz was used only by baqsy for healing rituals. They played it for long, continuous periods to treat illnesses, cleanse people of impurity, and protect them from evil spirits. Its sound was believed to resonate with nature, reaching the earth, sky, and cosmos, and restoring harmony in human energy.

The musical history of the qobyz begins with Ikhlas Dukenuly (1843–1916), a qobyz player and kui composer who developed more complex musical forms beyond the traditional healing melodies known as saryn. Later, under Soviet rule, the qobyz was banned as it was associated with baqsy practices and seen as “anti-scientific superstition.” Performers of the instrument were also subjected to repression.

The concert Akqular Sazy, performed during the final week of the Triennale, features 24 kuis about swans, composed in the 19th–20th centuries — an image deeply embedded in many Kazakh legends. This program reflects Raushan Orazbay’s long-standing artistic practice of restoring the qobyz’s original sacred, healing, and social functions.

‍The Whisperer says:

‍“From a height where a swan can speak alone with the wind, everyone below looks small, like ants. Only the rays of the sun on the water remain bright and unchanged. One day I will return to this lake, and I will meet you there again.”