buulbuul Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee residency

Having formed a duo called ‘buulbuul’ (from Kazakh ‘nightingale’), my collaborator and friend Kas and I have joined a residency at Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee Radio for slightly more than 1 month to experiment with sound & poetry under the concept of ‘gül and bulbul’ (from Kazakh ‘flower and nightingale’).

For this residency, guided by Radna Rumping, Arif Kornweitz and Andrea González, we have produced 3 interconnected songs in one piece. It is a poetry bundle, consisting of three poems in two languages, English and Kazakh. Birds, flowers, cruising, heartbreaks, flutes, drums, and love gardens with peris; a baq (garden) is an imaginary paradise of longing. Connecting and (re)interpreting traditional and modern imagery, the bundle explores what shape a modern queer understanding of Central Asian poetry and sound can take.

You can read more about the piece here.

The above is a photo by Kas and me, picturing two of the flute instruments we have used (called qus or sazsırnay in Kazakh) which produce bird chirps and sounds.

Concept photoshoot of our duo, taken by © Zinmong.