Harmonizing Heritage: One Woman’s Quest To Revolutionize How Audiences Experience a Centuries-Old Kazakh Instrument

Evening has just fallen in the heart of Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, and Layla Tazhibayeva, carrying a long, slender bow, has just taken center stage at Muzcafe, a lounge-like performing arts venue catering to both locals and foreigners alike. Tazhibayeva draws attention to the other members of her namesake band, Layla-Qobyz, a dombyra player, bass guitarist, drummer and keyboardist forming a semicircle behind her. A quiet applause from the more than 100 attendees seated in front of her echoes through the place. Then, turning to the audience, her right hand gently caresses the stout neck of the four-string instrument. Its white, oblong, diamond-shaped body, coiling like a swan in repose, perches upon a stand about 1.5 meters off the ground, commanding the audience’s intrigue.

The elektroqobyz, as its dubbed, departs dramatically from its earliest predecessor, the qylqobyz, from which it takes its inspiration. And while Tazhibayeva, her band and the viola-like instrument she designed, with its nasal sound, excite the audience with covers of British and American rock covers, within other musical circles, many wonder whether her 21st-century update of one of Central Asia’s most-sacred and oldest instruments threatens its very cultural existence. But Tazhibayeva isn’t too concerned about that because the audience’s attention proves her work is indeed saving the qobyz from obscurity. “Everyone who comes to my concerts always leaves with excitement. This is the best reward for me,” she says.

The original qylqobyz, meaning horsehair (qyl) cavity (kovy), takes root in the instrument’s organic construction. Carved from a single piece of wood—usually maple, birch, juniper, elm, pine or even apricot—the qylboyz is believed by the Kazakhs and other Turkic peoples to derive life and spirit from the tree it is cut from. Measuring between 60 and 98 centimeters and comprising two horsehair strings and a bulbous, bucket-shaped body draped with leather, the original qylqobyz design mirrors all the features of humans, replete with a head, ears, neck, chest and foot, and is generally played upright, with the base resting between the knees using a bow.

For Tazhibayeva, the power of the qylqobyz, also known more simply as qobyz, resonates beyond the music she creates with it. She points toward its healing qualities. As a young child, Tazhibayeva suffered from constant sickness and ailments. But she credits the instrument for restoring her to health. “The qobyz can truly heal both the body and soul,” she says, explaining the private and public qobyz-playing lessons she leads, “Everything changed with my qobyz classes: I got sick less and became stronger.”

Others, throughout the steppe of present-day Kazakhstan and the rest of Central Asia, share Tazhibayeva’s sentiment. Legend attributes the qylqobyz’s sacred origins back some 1,500 years to Middle Turkic hero Korkut ata, who in a quest to achieve eternal life, carved what was believed to be the very first qylqobyz. Still, history shows that as early as the fifth to eighth century, shamans and baksys (traditional spirit doctors) played the instrument to communicate with aruahtar (spirits) to heal people from sickness and banish evil spirits and death with its melody. So accepted were its spiritual powers that as early as the 20th century one could find a qylqobyz dangling from the doorframe of a yurt to safeguard against malicious spirits. As Sholpan Rauandina , a professor at the Qurmanğazy Kazakh National Conservatory, in Almaty, explains, “The qobyz protects nature, animals and people. The qobyz is the bearer of eternal life.”

Prior to the 20th century, because of its sacred quality, most people dared not even touch the instrument out of fear that it could affect their destinies. Beyond the shamans and spirit doctors, only akyns (poets) and zhyraus (singers), who called upon by ancestors to recite songs and poetry, would play the qylqobyz, often at the headquarters of khans, to deliver military and political advice, missives, as well as the heroic deeds of khans and batyrs of times gone by. “The Kazakhs had their own ‘musical internet’: akyns spread the news from auyl (village) to auyl with their musical compositions,” explains Tazhibayeva.

As the zhyraus, shamans and aqyns throughout history have demonstrated, people don’t just decide to play the qylqobyz. Instead, the qylqobyz chooses its player. This usually occurs over a series of dreams in which the spirits of ancestors obligate the living to pick up the instrument. Seventh-generation qylqobuz player Aknar Tattibaikyzy’s own calling reaffirms this notion. She recounts when she was 17 years old, she visited the grave of her great-grandfather, renowned Kazakh composer Ykylas Dukenuly, whom Kazakhs most associate with the instrument after Korkut ata. Later that night his spirit came to her and directed her to take up the instrument. “After that I realized that I had to play the qylqobyz, since I have a genetic predisposition to it,” she says.

But events over the last 100 years have greatly threatened the qylqobyz and its original function. Soviet purges across Soviet Asia targeting shamans and baqsys, for example, have both robbed Kazakhs of the social need for the instrument and how they have come to see the instrument. The determination to “civilize” non-Russian Asiatic peoples with injected European-influenced styles and trends, furthermore, led to efforts to “modernize” the instrument for orchestral performance, resulting in the creation of its next generation prima-qobyz in the mid-1930s.

But those modernization efforts came at the expense of the instrument’s once defining features. Gone were its leather cover and its bucket-shaped bowls. It’s two horsehair strings gave way to four metal ones, adding to its characteristic timbre and deep, voluminous sound a higher register. The prima-qobyz also added a bridge and two F-holes, lending the instrument to more of a viola look and sound. No longer played alone to accompany shamanic recitations or epic performances, the new prima-qobyz would grow in function as part of an ensemble of bowed string instruments. “The only thing left from the qylqobyz is the flageolet and nail technique of producing sounds,” says Tattibaikyzy, who performs as a soloist for the Academic Orchestra of Kazakh.

Tattibaikyzy, however, acknowledges that the development of the prima-qobyz, with its louder sound and more-diverse range, has contributed to greater interest over the decades. She specifically credits the late composer Ekegal Rakhmadiev for the increased attention. During his 27-year tenure at the Qurmanğazy Kazakh National Conservatory in Almaty, beginning in 1968, he helped bring the instrument to the forefront of scholarly discussions by bringing in established prima-qobyz folk players to teach others how to play it. “If the rector, an adept of academic music, had not invited an old folk performer to the conservatory, the qylqobyz would probably have already disappeared,” Tattibaikyzy says.

Rauandina takes a similar approach when addressing the issue of the qobyz’s evolution. For her, the instrument’s modifications are just par for the course, especially as they have helped bring new attention to it. “The most important thing is that we have preserved the original qylqobyz. As for its subtypes, like the prima-qobyz, they have their own way of evolution and success,” she says.

But today’s generation of rock of and popular music creators have even forced the prima-qobyz to evolve. Tazhibayeva, who often plays surrounded by her bandmates and in front of hundreds of music lovers, for example, has recognized how the electronic guitar, bass and keyboard kept drowning out the instrument. And this was the same with others. Groups like the all-female Kazakh band Asyl even tried to insert a piezo sensor (microphone) into the prima-qobyz, but that failed to resonate sound loud enough for clubs, bars or music halls. “Even that didn’t work. The scene demanded the true elektroqobyz,” Tazhibayeva says.

So, taking inspiration from the diverse sounds and technologies of such great musicians as Vanessa Mae, Tina Guo and others, Tazhibayeva, along with guitar master Vyacheslav Kochanov, in 2019 set out to modernize the instrument for today’s audience and began crowdfunding for their first design of the electrokobyz. Updates to the prima-qobyz now include a chorus pedal that creates an effect of multiple qobyzes playing at the same time. And with the use of a combo amplifier, stamp box, bow, direct box and other parts, the duo have designed a version of the prima-qobyz without the audio feedback loops, a key feature during live concerts. “It is amazing and cool to make different chips such as distortion on the electric qobyz,” Tazhibayeva says, adding, “Its sound is cleaner, straighter and brighter.”

Diana Doshimova, one of Tazhibayeva’s former qobyz students, currently serves as secretary to the International Qobyz Championship Tazhibayeva started at the height of the COVID pandemic. She believes Tazhibayeva’s innovation was bound to generate quite a bit of conversation and criticism. “Layla is like a pioneer. It's always hard to be a pioneer,” says Doshimova.

The debate that the elektroqobyz has generated focuses on concerns from the academic music community of Kazakhstan. Discussions have centered on the introduction of electronic elements to an instrument at once centuries-old and sacred. A group of qobyz experts, for example, have been some of the most-vocal critics of Tazhibayeva’s innovation, arguing that the elektroqobyz departs from the instrument's sacred roots and threatens to dilute its cultural significance.

And its precisely this idea that has rattled many critics, who have especially argued the elektroqobyz deals a great blow to the traditional kui, a musical genre made widespread by the likes of 19th-century Qurmanğazy Sağyrbaiuly, a 19th-century Kazakh composer who played both the dombyra and qylqobyz. The kui possesses a distinctive tonality and rhythm enhanced traditionally by the instruments’ special sound features. “A group of composers wanted to prohibit me to compose arrangements and play the elektrokobyz. … [They] were sure that I had spoiled and destroyed Qurmanğazy’s kui,” she says.

Every year since 2020, when COVID swept across the globe, Tazhibayeva has organized an online qobyz competition to promote the instrument. While it had started locally within Kazakhstan, it has since grown to become an international event. This year’s two-day competition, hosted in Almaty, takes place later this year both online and in person. “Layla's goal is to create a platform where qobyz players with diverse backgrounds and from different parts of Kazakhstan—and the world—could showcase their talents and learn from one another,” says Doshimova.

Tazhibayeva, however, finds that performing in front of live audiences in her native Kazakhstan is where the true revival occurs. And it’s no different at Muzcafe, where Tazhibayeva, backed by her band, draws her bow across the elektroqobyz in front of her and starts to play the opening chords of "Bittersweet Symphony," a familiar hit-song from former British rock group The Verve. The audience falls into a hushed reverence as notes from the elektroqobyz reverberate, stirring emotions across the venue. By the end of the song, as Tazhibayeva and her band begin bowing, the crowd erupts in applause. “When I play this, I transit into another world, the world of incredibly beautiful sounds. I feel great there and invite my audience to fly there with me.” Such is the power of the qobyz.