The artistic world of traditional culture of Central Asian peoples is determined by contents that lie in certain historical periods and, at the same time, remain outside history. Contemporary science allows us to study the originality of the art of people in Central Asia, which is important for an objective reconstruction of the general picture of the art’s evolution. Historical and social changes cannot be studied without a clear understanding of cultural integrity and the perception of the artistic laws of culture and its context in this or that socio-historical period.

The similar actions in fairytales, epics, and dastan of Altaians, Tatars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Karakalpaks, and other Turkic-speaking people, shows that the Uzbek dastan “Alpamysh,” as a creation of Turkic oral folk art, has a long history. In other nations, it is called “Alpamys,” “Alpamiros Botir,” “Alyp-manash,” “Alpamsha,” “Alpamysh,” and “Barchin Hiluv.”

A lion dance was a part of the repertoire of mime artists and puppetry musicians of Bukhara until the 1940s. In the past, the lion dance was also popular among the populations of Samarkand, Khujand, Istaravshan, and Hisor. Tajik ethnographer Nizam Nurjanov gave the first complete description of the lion dance in his work Tajik Traditional Theatre (1956). He later published more details in an illustrated article arising from his fieldwork in Bukhara.

Wedding ceremonies play an important role in social life of the Uzbek people. Embodying various traditions, rituals, and celebrations, weddings are important lifetime events since they mark the birth of a new family. But a wedding is not only a union of two young people and launching of a new life but also a solemn rite of entry into important social norms and a continuation of the family legacy.

The people inhabiting the present territory of Uzbekistan have their rich folklore, like any other nation on the earth. Dastans are special among the genres of folklore epics in terms of volume and variety of the means of expression. Like other major genres of folk art, they arise on the basis of archaic folklore and ancient national history and incorporate both ancient cultural traditions and the memory of the formation of the people, their spiritual world and historical destinies, their civil, moral and aesthetic ideals. Dastan (in Persian داستان), means ‘story’. It is the epic folklore and literature of the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Dastans are either folklore or literary interpretations of heroic myths, legends and fairy stories.

제6차 중앙아시아 무형유산 보호협력 네트워크 회의 2015 국가발표 (1)