ASH, DOMBRA, AND THE WORD: THE NOVEL AS A CHRONICLE OF A FADING TRADITION

Abstract

The article analyses Talasbek Asemkulov’s novel as a musical archive, an ethnographic text, and a form of aesthetic memory. Its novelty lies in a cross-disciplinary model of verbal–musical hermeneutics that aligns descriptive episodes, technical terminology and figurative metaphors with modal–rhythmic formulae, articulatory technique, and modal–rhythmic models of Kazakhstan’s traditional music. The material is organised on three levels: (1) textual identification of musically salient markers in the prose; (2) their mapping onto the intonational and metrorhythmic patterns of the dombra idiom; (3) hypothesis testing through comparative analysis of variants and schools, including areal–stylistic distinctions. The study formalises a “novel-as-archive” reading protocol with operational units (narrative cue – intonational gesture – performance decision), proposes a typology of textual indicators for technique and mode–rhythm, introduces, for the first time, a comparative commentary on vanishing practices documented in prose, and sets out applied pathways for reconstruction and pedagogy. Case analyses show that “the word” fixes outlines of form, the character of sound production, and timbral dramaturgy, while refining genre–stylistic attributions. The analysis yields new data added to the corpus of knowledge on Kazakh traditional music. Among the conclusions, a new perspective emerges for the humanities: the formation of historically informed performance (HIP) and the possibility of reconstructing lost elements of musical memory without compromising authenticity.