The Healing Qobyz: Traditional Music Therapy and the Future of an Ancient Instrument

• In Event: Politics, Patrons, and Performance: Music, Identity, and Cultural Authority from the Steppe to the Stage

Abstract

The Qazaq qobyz, a two-stringed bowed fiddle, is one of the oldest musical instruments of the Central Asian steppe. The qobuz evolved as a part of nomadic Qazaq lifeways as the instrument of the baqsy shaman, played during spiritual and healing rituals. The qobuz plays a significant role as a Qazaq national instrument, and qobyz healing arts were integrated into traditional medicine for centuries. However, in the 19th century qobyz healing, along with the Kazakh cosmology in which it was embedded, was derided by Russian colonizers, and in the 20th century Soviet power enforced a bakshy-eradication campaign while working to desacralize the instrument and limit it to concert use. Nonetheless, dedicated qobyz players have kept the instrument’s heritage alive and can give many examples of its use in healing and therapy. Most Western-based scholarship has remained skeptical, approaching qobyz arts as embedded in mythology and alien to the scientific discourses of Music Therapy. This presentation will explore the qobyz as a therapeutic instrument embedded in a traditional ritual framework while also considering contemporary use of the qobyz in clinical healing practices in Qazaqhstan. This is a collaborative research project that draws on participant observation and interviews as well as research, aiming for an experience-based study that can accommodate multiple worldviews. The goal of the larger study in to explore how the therapeutic properties of the qobyz can contribute to the field of Music Therapy while restoring dignity to a cultural heritage that has undergone significant colonial and political repression.

Author

• Anna Carolyn Oldfield, Coastal Carolina U