Kazakhstan celebrates the legendary poet who could improvise thousands of verses
The Kazakh bard Zhambyl Zhabayev mastered the ancient art of aitys, a competitive form of oral poetry where performers improvise thousands of rhyming verses while playing a two-stringed lute.
Zhambyl Zhabayev remains a towering figure in Central Asian literature for his incredible ability to compose complex epic poems entirely on the fly. Known as a master of the aitys, he participated in rhythmic song battles where poets traded witty, improvised verses to the accompaniment of the dombra.
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