The Art of Aitys

In 2015, the "Art of Aitys" was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity as a cultural heritage of Kazakhstan and the Kyrgyz Republic. This decision was made at the session of UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee in Windhoek, Namibia.

Aitys was inscribed on behalf of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan as a special form of improvisational art. It is a competition between two people skilled in poetic improvisation, during which verses are recited or songs are performed accompanied by a national musical instrument similar to the Kazakh dombra. The topic is chosen by the audience, and the participant who best demonstrates their musical skill, sense of rhythm, originality, and quick wit wins.

Aitys is a poetic genre formed in oral literature since ancient times - a verbal contest, a poetic competition performed impromptu before an audience.

Aitys, its types and artistic features

The genre of aitys, which has existed in Kazakh oral literature since ancient times, has its own origins, distinctive features, and history of development. Aitys is a unique form of folk oral literature. Aitys exists not only among Kazakhs but also among Arab Bedouins, several Turkic-speaking peoples, and major poetic competitions exist among the peoples of India. Some researchers claim that the origins of aitys go back to deep antiquity. Its initial elements, they believe, were born in the era when art forms had not yet separated and constituted a single whole: song, verse, their creation and performance, movements, facial expressions, and more existed inseparably. It was during that period that the first steps of aitys were probably taken.

While the badik-aitys, considered the oldest form, was based on humanity's desire to influence nature, it is difficult to determine which of the other types of aitys appeared earlier or later. Nevertheless, based on the content, vocabulary, and sentence structure of some aitys, one can speculate in which era they emerged. For example, compared to the aitys of animals and the aitys of the dead with the living, the riddle-aitys clearly appeared much later.

While in the oldest form of ritual aitys - the contest between a young man and woman - the main themes are youthful feelings and competition in skill, in the aitys of poets, alongside comparison of mastery and verbal contest, each akyn adds the glorification of their clan. This became especially widespread in the 19th century. Famous poets of that era: Shozhe, Balta, Orynbay, Kempirbay, Tezekbay, Suyunbay, Tubek, Omarkul, Tabiya, Murat, Sugir, Zhaskilen, Bala Omar, Birzhan, Sara, and others, along with short poems on various topics, participated in aitys competitions, went through numerous verbal battles, and the names of many of them were preserved in history precisely through aitys. The genre of aitys holds an exceptional place in Kazakh oral literature both in quantity and quality of works. Existing not only among Kazakhs but throughout the East, aitys has preserved its genre qualities and forms only in Kazakh literature.