Astana Art Museum Revives Lost Kazakh Instruments for Hands-On Exploration
Astana's Art Museum Recreates Abai's Dombra
The air in the museum's halls feels different—thick not with archival dust, but with the resonance of aged wood and the quiet whisper of clay. There are no familiar glass barriers here, no stern signs forbidding touch. Instead, this museum is designed as a living, tactile space where history comes alive in the hands of every visitor.
We are greeted by Yernar Aitbayev, a designer and one of the museum's founding visionaries. His passion for traditional instruments transforms a simple tour into a deep immersion in the cultural heritage of the Kazakh people. Aitbayev immediately highlights what sets the Astana Art Museum apart from conventional institutions:
"In a typical museum, every exhibit is behind glass. Here, it's the opposite—you can play every instrument, feel every piece with your own hands."
At the heart of the collection are Kazakh musical instruments crafted by master Azamat Bakiyev. Today, the museum hosts an entire team of instrumentalists and researchers dedicated to their study.
Our journey through sound begins with the saz syrnai, a small clay wind instrument adorned with delicate glaze. Gazing at its fragile bird-shaped figures, it's hard to imagine that its prototype was unearthed by archaeologists during excavations of ancient Otrar.
Aitbayev proudly demonstrates the museum's simplified learning system for the saz syrnai, designed specifically for children: instead of complex sheet music, numbered notes allow any child to cover the right holes and produce a melody.
"Our first goal is to teach children to play effortlessly, without overcomplicating things," he explains.
The Kazakh saz syrnai has already captivated audiences on major international television shows, and today it serves as a vital tool for speech therapists, helping children—often absorbed in gadgets—develop fine motor skills and breath control.
Behind every exhibit lies a story of painstaking research, almost like a detective investigation. Aitbayev recounts how the museum revived the craft of making the shankobyz, an ancient Kazakh instrument consisting of a metal frame with a vibrating reed, no larger than five to seven centimeters. Played by pressing it to the teeth and using the mouth as a resonator, its rich overtones resemble the human voice and are often used for sound imitation. To restore this lost art, the museum's specialists traveled all the way to Yakutia—few masters of the shankobyz remained in Kazakhstan, and they had to relearn metalworking techniques from their northern neighbors.
"Back then, nearly every second Kazakh could play the shankobyz," Aitbayev says. "We play it differently than the Yakuts—our style is our own."
Yernar Aitbayev picks up the next instrument—a bulky, peculiar-looking one. It's an uldek, a small clay flute considered a variety of the saz syrnai. When he begins to play, the hall seems to fill with a storm. This deep, resonant sound is known as the "howl of the wind."
Equally fascinating is the story of the kernei—a signaling horn whose sound once carried for four kilometers. For years, the museum's craftsmen struggled to achieve its true tone until they discovered a unique century-old wood in an abandoned mine. Only this time-tested material allowed the instrument to reclaim its powerful, commanding voice.
A special place in the museum's workshop belongs to the zhorynk dabył, a large drum. The secret to its varied timbres lies in its hide—stretched buffalo skin.
The crown jewel of the collection, which we were fortunate to see first, is a reconstructed three-stringed dombra of the great Abai Kunanbayev. While most are familiar with the two-stringed version, history preserves other accounts. In 1967, an expedition in Semipalatinsk's Abai District uncovered Abai's three-stringed dombra and recorded seven previously unknown three-part küis (traditional melodies).
"We restored it from archival sketches, preserving every detail," says Yernar Aitbayev, showing us the small nails holding the body together. "Nails in an instrument are a huge risk—excess metal can 'kill' the sound, but ours sings."
The strings on Abai's dombra deserve special mention. They're not synthetic but natural animal gut, processed using a forgotten technique. The strings are salted, dried, and stretched inside reed stems to achieve incredible durability and that same ancient, deep resonance heard across the steppe centuries ago.
Looking at these instruments, it's clear that Aitbayev and his colleagues are safeguarding the future of national culture.
"Our children sit glued to social media, barely speaking to each other," he says with sorrow. "Yet the saz syrnai or the dombra—these are the living conversations we so desperately lack."
