Home› Asia›Central Asia›Kyrgyzstan
Music of Kyrgyzstan
Shashmaqam of Bukhara, Kazakh dombra kui, Kyrgyz komuz and Manas epic, Turkmen dutar, Tajik falak and Afghan rubab music.
Sung and searched in Kyrgyz, Russian. The YouTube button above can run your search in that language.
Roots and traditions
Traditional music
Travelling musicians and shamans called manaschi are popular for their singing and komuz-playing. Their music is typically heroic epics, such as the most famous story, the Manas epic (20 times longer than Homer's Odyssey), which is the patriotic tale of a warrior named Manas, and his descendants, who fight with the Chinese. There are modern reciters of the Manas who are very popular, such as Rysbek Jumabaev and Sayaqbay Karalaev. Aside from the komuz, Kyrgyz folk instruments include the kyl kiak (qyl-qyiyak), a two-stringed upright bow instrument (cf. fiddle), sybyzgy, a side-blown flute, chopo-choor and the temir ooz komuz (mouth komuz), also known as jaw harp in some countries. The komuz is the national instrument of Kyrgyzstan. It is a plucked string instrument. The kyl kiak, however, is also an important symbol of Kyrgyz identity. It is a string instrument, related to the Mongolian morin khuur, and is associated with horses and the vital role they play in Kyrgyz culture.
Popular music
Pop music
Rock and metal music is popular in Kyrgyzstan. Darkestrah is a well-known metal band from Bishkek, now based in Germany. Their music combines traditional Kyrgyz folk music with black metal. Since the 2010s rap music by local artists in both Kyrgyz and Russian has significantly gained popularity. In the 2020s the capital of Kyrgyzstan witnessed a wave of protest rap songs, most famously the song Sayasat ("Politics"), in which the rapper Begish unleashed a scathing critique against corruption in Kyrgyz politics. Other politically-motivated rap songs deal with environmental issues such as the extreme air pollution in Bishkek. There is also a new pop genre called Z-Pop which influenced mainly by K-Pop and western pop music.
Read the full article: Music of Kyrgyzstan Text under CC BY-SA 4.0
Playing now
What Kyrgyzstan is listening to in 2026
Articles
No articles for Kyrgyzstan yet. Save a Markdown file to content/articles/ with
country: Kyrgyzstan in its front matter.
Live radio
Radio from Kyrgyzstan
Music only, no news or talk. Stations that play the local tradition come first, then the most listened. They play in the corner of the page.
Station directory by Radio Browser Streams come from each station's own server.