KZBlog

Tag archive for ‘music’

• Congratulations, Azerbaijan

  for winning Eurovision. A dubious honor I suppose: This is one of the few Eurovisions that actually featured a band I like, Zdob si Zdub. There’s no way a hard rock song could win, but I like bands that use horns and traditional instruments in rock genres. And I’m glad they at least got to […]

  5/15/11 • (Comments Off on Congratulations, Azerbaijan)

• Rock the Sailau!

  In what I guess is supposed to be something like MTV’s Rock the Vote (Sailau means election in Kazakh; I don’t know the word for vote), some pop stars have come out with a video encouraging people to vote in the upcoming Presidential election. International media is portraying them as some of the “hottest pop […]

  3/13/11 • (Comments Off on Rock the Sailau!)

• Freestailo Lives

  Thanks to J’s comment on an earlier post for this update on who freestailo is: According to this YouTube Video: His name is Ernar Kaldynov, was born in Karoi, small village in Western Kazakhstan. in 2007 he took part as singer with dombra(Kazakh National Instrument) in SuperStar.KZ show (Kazakh version of American Idol), but did […]

  5/22/10 • (2)

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  Mashina Vremeni

  We were lucky enough to score tickets to the Mashina Vremeni concert in Astana on Thursday. Mashina Vremeni is one of the classic Russian rock bands. The concert tour was titled “We are 40 Years Old” but they pointed out that the tour started last year so actually they are 41 years old. I don’t […]

  5/16/10 • (3)

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  Jumyr Kylysh or Two Warriors

  Chris Merriman was kind enough to lend me Ulytau’s most recent album, Jumyr Kylysh which is being released in English as Two Warriors. I suppose the name change is because Jumyr Kylysh seems to mean “round ball” in Kazakh. Non-Kazakhs, who have never heard of Ulytau, would not expect an album called Round Ball to […]

  11/07/09 • (Comments Off on Jumyr Kylysh or Two Warriors)

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  Blues Explosion was not number one in Astana. Ace of Base was number one in Astana!

  According to a sign outside of Congress Hall, the local concert hall, Ace of Base is playing Astana! The big bands usually go to Almaty. Most recently the Scorpions did Almaty. But big Russian bands like Chaif and Time Machine, not to mention pop stars like Zhanna Friske come to Almaty with some regularity. Astana’s […]

  2/06/08 • (Comments Off on Blues Explosion was not number one in Astana. Ace of Base was number one in Astana!)