This season we sang Dudurai, a song about star-crossed loves in Kazakhstan. During the Soviet era the Soviet Union integrated Kazakhistan into the USSR, and integrated Soviet “gulag” labor camps into Kazakhstan. Stalin forced hundreds of thousands of Kazakhs to migrate out of Kazakhstan and millions of Russians to migrate in. Communist leaders ruled Kazakhstan both from Moscow and internally, strongly squelching dissent and using the nation as a nuclear test ground. By the time the USSR fractured in the late ‘80s Kazakhstan was inextricably bound to Russia. The interplay between Kazakh and Russian culture, language, economy, politics is at the heart of Kazakhstan’s development into a strong, independent nation today…and of this song.
We are revising the AllAroundThisWorld.com site and are currently using a new (better!) site — ExploreEverywhere.com — to tell you all about our curriculum offerings and how to become one of our teachers. That said, if you were on ExploreEverywhere, you clicked to find more information about a song or lesson, and landed here, you’re in the right place! Some links may be broken and a detail or two may be out of date…but close the popup window and enjoy!
