It was an autumn morning in 2010. I was staying with a family located in a small town called Shynggyl (Qing He青河) in the northwestern Chinese province of Xinjiang. The pleasantly cool breeze stirring autumn leaves of the silver birches along the road. That morning we got up early and drove from the town of Shynggyl to the village of Araltobe, a half-hour away. This part of Xinjiang is well known within the Qazaq community for having maintained many customs of traditional Qazaq culture.

As we entered the village, a fragrance of jusan or wormwood burst forward and a long aisle filled with products from a bygone world came into view: traditional costumes, instruments, household tools. I saw people rushing in from all directions, some holding a baby in their arms, others helping the elderly out of their arba (a typical Qazaq carriage). There was a radiating joyfulness on everyone’s faces as they spoke and laughed together, as if they were recounting long-lost memories or impossible aspirations. The aitys had already begun.

The opening scene of the aitys included a performance of the traditional dance qarazhorga and dombra performance, exhibition of Qazaq food such as qazy, and the 56-nationality dance, associated with the the praising the unity of 56 nationalities in China. Kigyz ui arranged in the open air echoed the white clouds in the blue sky and the sheep herds on the far side of the aul. In front of these kigyz ui were the alty baqans, the Qazaq traditional swings where young men and women meet with each other  -- making friends or beginning magical love stories. Holding aitys at jailau, the pastoral lands brought to mind long-lost life cycles and memories, allowed us to feel connected to some authentic Qazaq way of life.

But what is aitys? What is at the core of its significance?  

Aitys is a genre of oral literature with roots going as far back as the eleventh century. A kind of cross between a poetry slam, concert, and debate, each aitys pits two poets—or aqyns—against each other. Either the host or the audience inaugurates the competition by choosing a topic or theme, which the aqyns then enter into poetic debate with improvised poetry. Performers sing their composition to the accompaniment of a dombra, a two-stringed instrument resembling a long-necked lute which is popular in some part of Central Asia. It is the audience who chooses the winner based on their opinion of the performer’s wit, originality, and musicianship. Both men and women perform in aitys, which over the years has served as a platform for discussing everything from personal reminiscences to national history, current affairs, and shifting social mores. This is a lived tradition and a form of cultural capital that challenges as well as cements bonds among Qazaqs across the diaspora communities with the ‘homeland’ Qazaqstan, including within some of its least hospitable places.

In Qazaqstan today, the aitys is enjoying an unprecedented level of popularity, much of which is owed to its being organized nationally and broadcast on television. For the current Qazaqstani government, aitys has served as an effective venue for Ruhani Zhangyru, its official program of national cultural renewal. Part of this program involves reviving traditions seen as intrinsic to Qazaq identity. In the words of Zhursen Yerman, the head of Qazaqstan’s national aitys program, aitys “is not a creation of certain individuals; it is engraved in Qazaqs’ blood and soul.”Qazaqs believe it is the carrier of their language and culture, and if they were suddenly to lose it—for whatever reason—they would be losing an irrecoverable aspect of their language, their traditions, and their identity. They would become, in a sense, “no one.”

My interview is based on my personal experience years ago in Xinjiang and one and half months of ethnographic fieldwork among Xinjiang Qazaqs living in Qazastan in 2019 in an attempt to understand their blurred and changeable identity and how they negotiate and shuttle between different identities in rather flexible occasions and under extreme circumstances, and what role aitys played in allowing them to navigating this identity.

As Yerzhanat, one of the Xinjiang aqyns, sang,

Au boimda talentpen talap bolghan,    I have talent in my body. 

Sannaly soz sueilein sannaly oidan.   I will say the words from a conscious 

mind. 

Talppynghan balapangha qanat bolam,  I will be the wings for those who try to fly, 

Ashyqqan jetymderge tamaqbolam.     I will be the food for those who lost their

parents.  

yelyme qalqan bolam arqan bolam,      I will be the shield and the rope, 

Naizamen yietyn sadaq bolam,         I will be the spear and the arrow for my 

people, 

Shyndyq shynshyl Xinjiangymda tuyp osken,    I was born in truthful Xinjiang,  

Men qalai otyryke mazaq bolam.       How can I be a joke or a lie? 

Alyp Zhonghua yelyng aspanynda,     under the sky of big Zhuanghua, 

Juldyzy jarqyraghan Qazaq bolam. I am a Kazakh whose stars shine brightly.

Read further:

Interview with Zhaina Meirkhan on the complex realities of aitys in Xinjiang

An example of an aitys performance