Kyrgyzstan culture   Kyrgyz customs and national traditions

Yurta is a small dwelling, decorated with hand-made felt carpets and strips. Having its routes at ancient Turkic tribes yurta took all the best from many centuries' experience of people. Kyrgyz tribes, occupied with nomadic cattle-breeding in mountains, worked out the best type of transportable dwelling that is easily disjointed, moved on pack animals and again set.

Yurta consists of wooden construction and felt cover.

Latticed sliding walls (kerege) consist of separate links. They define sizes of yurta. From the external side kerege are covered with mats, made of cheegrass stalk. It lets air the dwelling and the same time keep it from wind and dust.

Sphere roof of yurta is made of sharp-cut bend from one side poles - uuk. By one side, where bend is, they are fixed in the upper part of wall basis, by other side they are set to the wholes in tunduk - wooden circle at the top of yurta.

Yurta is made of willow and only for tunduk, that is the whole for smoke, going out of the yurta, they use more solid kinds of wood (birch, juniper).

Yurta is covered by felts of different types. That are tunduk jabuu, tuunduk, uzuktor. Felt cover is connected with its frame by narrow woven and leather stripes. The cover of tunduk is moveable and the hole for smoke is easily opened in the morning and closed in the night with help of long lassos. The doorway is covered with felt or woven ornamented curtain.

Yurta can be set for 1 hour.

Internal and external sides of yurta are rich decorated with different ornamented items made of felt, applications, braided patterned fringe, multicolored tassels (chachyk) and patterned braid (terenchek boo).

During the years not only yurta but its interior has changed. Right side of the yurta was considered women's part (epchi jak). Here colored bags with felt applications, clothes, head-dresses, jewelry, needle work of mistress and pottery were kept. Place for food was separated with screen from ornamented mat (chygdak).

Left side was for men (er jak), there the best clothes and head dresses of men were hanging, closer to entrance there was harness.

Place in the opposite of entrance was considered honorary (tor). At this part of the wall there was the row of trunks where rarely used patterned carpets were laid. The more carpets - the richer people living in the yurta. At the floor of the yurta only the best carpets - ala-kiyiz were put, then shirdaks, and on them - narrow quilts (toshok) or fur lays - koldolosh. Tor was the centre of yurta. It was place for the most honorary guests. "When you are the guest, don't sit to tor". If the person more honorary than you will come, than the master will tell you "Give place to him!". And you will have to give place before all the guests. So when you are guest, take less honorary place. And the master of the house will come and tell: "Respected, please, go to tor", then your authority will go up before everybody"). Before sitting guests they were put the kind of table-cloth - dostarkhan. In the middle of the yurta they burnt the fire and cooked the meals. It is called kolomto. Rich people cooked their dishes in special yurtas - ashkanas. Poor people lived in smoked small yurtas (boz ui, kara ui), where they kept not only their utilities (bed, pottery), but in the cold time of the year - new born calves and lambs.

In yurta people are always surrounded by comfortable carpets, woven and embroidered covers, blankets and pillows and other utilities often made by mistress herself. Materials that she needs are felt, fleecy cloths, fur, textile, cheegrass, the main graphic is color and ornament.

The coloring of Kyrgyz national cloths, carpets, embroideries is saturated and cheerful. It's composed of strong, contrast colors, where warm colors - red and brown prevail. In the past masters used natural colors. Ornament has its origin from far Bronze epoch, but gradually it was improved and expanded. Its elements were taken from flora and fauna that were surrounding the nomadic people. The main motif of Kyrgyz ornament was curl "kochkor" - stylized ram's horn. Sinuous line with rhythmically placed curls is named "kyal" - "dream", "fantasy". It also reminds the branch of flourishing tree.

Kyrgyz carpets - "kiyiz" and "shyrdak" are made of warm felt and are always rich decorated with ornament. Shyrdak is made with help of mosaic technique of application, based on closing of felt blanks with multicolored threads. Ala-kiyiz is made by ramming, rolling the different-colored fur into the friable felt basis. In first case - cleanness of lines, in second - their fuzziness. This "color running" makes effect of abruptness and gives ala-kiyiz softness, water-colorness.

Mats and screens - as a rule are the whole art composition, got by braiding of every cheegrass stalk by multicolored fur. On hand-made machines, women wove from thick threads the braid (boo) of different ornaments. They embroidered by fur and gold thread on leather, felt, chamois and broadcloth.

Kyrgyz stringed instruments

Comuz - crafted from a single piece of wood with three strings that are played by plucking. The modern comuz is about 85-90 cm long with strings made of kapron. A special feature of the comuz is the ability to tune the strings in variety of ways to suit the music being played. To play the comuz, the performer holds it in a horizontal position while seated or -more rarely- standing. Numerous playing techniques are possible and mastery of the right (plucking) hand technique especially allows for playing a variety of difficult and complex compositions. The comuz is a standard member of any Kyrgyz folk music group. According to legend, the first comuz was made by the hunter Kambar. He himself was a master performer (komuzchi), and Kambarkan became one of the distinctive creative genres of Kyrgyz folk music.

Kyyak (kyl kyyak) - a string and bow instrument 60-70 cm in length. The traditional kyyak is made from the wood of an apricot tree and has two strings of untwisted horse hair. Horse hair is also used for bow. The kyyak is played by master performer (kyyakchi) in a seated position with the instrument held vertically while the stretched hair on the bow is drawn gently across the strings. The fingers of the left hand do not press the strings to the fingerboard; they gently touch it, producing colorful, harmonic tones similar to certain techniques used in violin playing. Given two options for tuning, the upper string is melodious while the lower string is resonant. The traditional kyyak is an instrument transposing one octave down. The majority of the traditional compositions for the kyyak are very lyrical and heartfelt, which is completely in accordance with the musical nature of the instrument.