Postcard from Bishkek

I have mentioned, several times, that there used to be a website which stated that “Kyrgyzstan is not particularly well endowed with festivals” … which, in my opinion, is grossly unfair.  They may not always be the best organized affairs, but there are a wide variety of festivals giving visitors the chance to see (and […]

There are several famous quotes that basically boil down to the fact that music transcends language: “Where words leave off … Music begins” … it has “the ability to touch us emotionally where words fail” … as Longfellow put it, “Music is the universal language of mankind“, …and he was a poet … a “wordsmith”!  Here in […]

When I was at school I got promoted – out of the Second Set for English into the Top Set.  I suppose I should have been proud … but it had it’s drawbacks. Apart from having to get used to a different teacher, not a minor issue in the lead up to the all important […]

Today. 21st March, happens to be World Poetry Day.  The day was inaugurated by UNESCO in 1999 to recognize the  unique ability of poetry to capture the creative spirit of the human mind. The Day is also intended to support linguistic diversity through poetic expression and to offer endangered languages the opportunity to be heard within their […]

The Kyrgyz poet Esengul Ibraev was born into a farming family in the village of Chet Nur, in the Naryn oblast,  on 16th March 1934.  He died on 5th August, 2005, but had he lived, then yesterday would have been his eightieth birthday. A new book has been published to commemorate the anniversary.

Something unusual happened last May; the Committee on Science, Culture and Sports of the Jogorku Kenesh, (the parliament), passed a resolution. You might think that there’s nothing unusual in that … after all, that’s what parliament’s do.  It’s their job. This one caught my eye, however, because this one concerned marking the 75th anniversary of […]

Visitors to Bishkek are sometimes surprised that we have a Theater of Opera and Ballet which maintains companies – especially when it is remembered that neither ballet nor opera really feature in traditional Kyrgyz culture. Although a lot of attention is paid to Bubusara, the Kyrgyz ballerina who appears on the five som banknote – […]

Seventy years ago, 27th January, 1944, saw the end of the great battles of the Second World War … the Siege of Leningrad. It was one of the the longest and most destructive and costly sieges in all human history, (according to some estimates there were as many as one and a half million casualties), […]

Over the New Year we got a piece of surprising news … Some enterprising thieves decided to help themselves to a painting hanging in the Museum of Fine Arts.  It seems that a corporate event was being held in the Museum and, once it was over, the curators noticed that a painting, (Crimean Seascape painted […]

Although one source says that the poet and novelist Mukai Elebaev was born in 1905, but other sources suggest that it was on 15th January, 1906 that he first saw the light of day. When I saw the discrepancy, my first thought was that it was simply down, (once again), to the difference resulting from […]