An extravagant person in traditional Kazakh culture (on the problem of the formation of the sal-seri group)

The article discusses the time of the formation of a group of Kazakh singing poets - the sal-seri. This problem has to be solved by studying the behavioral features and basic personal traits of the poets who composed melodies to their own verses and performed their own songs themselves. The information concerning the group refers to the second half of the 19^th century. The primary sources the research is based on consist in the products of the sal-seri while the secondary ones are presented by the information concerning their appearance, behavior and lifestyle, as well as their relationship with the surrounding community. The last data were collected in the beginning of the 20^th century by the Russian scientists who fixed the stories of those who had seen the Kazakh sal-seri while the Kazakh scientists who worked in the middle of the 20^th century based their work on the memories of eyewitnesses, who had watched the sal and seri performances. The sal-seri were extremely extravagant in their manner of dressing and the way of behavior. The clothes of the sals were clownish, their behavior was eccentric while the costume and the manners of the seri were distinguished by deliberate refinement and grace. Both of them violated the traditional norms of behavior. In particular, their relations with the female sex were very liberated. The traditional society allowed some of its own members to violate the custom. These were individuals with extraordinary abilities, exceptional knowledge and skills like shamans, healers, visionaries, storytellers, singers etc. They were allowed to behave eccentrically, moreover -from some of them such kind of behavior was expected. However, there is a significant difference between two following types of extravagance. The first one was inherent to the traditional personality, while the second one was shown by the sal-seri. The unusual behavior of a traditional person (for example, a shaman) was interpreted as a message given by spirits to the society, a message from another world. The extravagance of a shaman had a “social significance” while he himself considered his own gift as a burden. On the contrary, the sal-seri were proud of their gift; on the basis of analysis of their behavior and sings, one can assert that their extravagance to be individualistic, as it represented the manifestation of their own uniqueness, the desire to declare themselves in the public way. The sal-seri's extravagance and the type of their personality can be called modern in contrast to the traditional type of personality and extravagance. There is an opinion in the works on history and folklore that the sal-seri group has its roots in the ancient times. Its appearance is considered to be a result of the disintegration of the military secret societies of the Turkic-Mongolian tribes in the time of class formation. However, the peculiarities of the sal-seri that characterize them as bright personalities and the individualism reflected in their songs emphasizing their own authorship in contrast to the traditional anonymity has made it possible to affirm that the essential condition for this group to be formed was the junction of tradition and modernity that appeared during the gradual transformation of the economic and social foundations in the traditional Kazakh society in the second half of the 19^th century.

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