Music of Kazakhstan

Folk and Modern Music

In 2019, we decided to take Almaty Airlines from Istanbul, Türkiye to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. As with all national airlines, they require you to have a layover in their country. Almaty Airlines is the national airline of Kazakhstan. We had no idea what was in store for us in Kazakhstan. In fact, we had never learned anything about the “stan” region and this led to further research on the cultures, the music, and anything we could find about this remote region.

Our Trip

First of all, we had a 12-hour layover in Almaty. I knew that the timezone jump would be hard on me and I wanted to attempt to make this constructive. So, I decided on a spa layover. We chose a hotel that had a great spa (seriously, I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else). I spent most of my layover either getting a massage, soaking up the steam in the Turkish bath, sweating it out in the …