Q-pop as Kazakhstan’s soft power and decolonisation driver

14.11.2023, 22:12 exclusive.kz

A distinctly original cultural phenomenon has emerged in Kazakhstan in the past decade – Q-pop.

As a musical genre it is a fusion of hip hop, Western pop music, electronic dance music, and R&B – young Kazakh musicians’ interpretation of musical styles in trend globally.

Q-pop comes as a package of strong vocals, catchy tunes, which are both melodic and soft and rhythmic, meaningful lyrics, unorthodox outfits and hairstyles, complicated dance routines, and high-quality music videos.

Q-pop has found international recognition and fandom, making Kazakhstan the only post-Soviet nation to make a global musical breakthrough.

Kazakhstan has been seeing a creative boom in recent years, driven by a new generation of citizens born after independence, without the experience of Russian cultural domination.

Q-pop, however, is a special story because it is not a spontaneous or natural phenomenon. It has been envisioned and created with specific ideas behind it by one individual – Yerbolat Bedelkhan.

Before coming up with the Q-pop idea, in 2001 Bedelkhan set up a boy band called Orda — he was a member of it along with his two brothers and two others. The band performed experimental pop that offered a much more creative and dynamic use of vocals and music, as opposed to sugary Soviet pop music, and complex and dynamic dance routines.

In 2015 Bedelkhan, and his production company Juz Entertainment, created the first, and so far the most successful, Q-pop band — Ninety One.

The band’s name is a reference to 1991, the year when Kazakhstan gained independence. Its five original members – three singers, Ace, Bala and Alem, and two rappers, Zac and AZ – were carefully selected and vigorously trained.

Ninety One, which now has four members, had to fight a tough battle for recognition at home in the early days, drawing criticism for dyeing their hair, using make up and for their outfits. But that is a thing of the past now.

Bedelkhan’s ambition was to simulate K-pop, which has become South Korea’s soft power tool, influencing how it is perceived globally, and a generator of considerable cash, triggering tourism to the country and so on.

Bedelkhan also wanted to use Q-pop as a decolonisation tool.

“It was about getting out of the Russian information space that we were still in even after getting formal independence,” he said in a recent interview.

He also recognized the unmet demand on the part of the new generation of Kazakhs for music in their own language.

“We, the [post-Soviet] Turkic nations are hungry for culture in our own language – there was a 70-year halt in our [cultural] development,” he said.

In addition to breaking Soviet-era cultural and social prejudices about ethnic Kazakhs and the Kazakh language as backward, Bedelkhan also wanted to prove that Kazakh-language music can be commercially successful.

Moreover, Bedelkhan wanted to introduce to young Kazakhs music that would raise social issues, but also inspire them through positive messages to dream big.

“The young want to hear something positive. They want to laugh, have fun, grow, they want to live.”

Journalist Timur Balymbetov, who writes about music, has said that the recent mushrooming of original Kazakh-language musicians in the country and their popularity shows that “gradually we are beginning to know who we are”.

“We used to look at Russia [as a model], we did not look at America, Europe, Korea. Russian music is an imitation [of Western music], we used to look at it and create our own imitation of that,” he said in an interview with El Kz YouTube channel.

“But our cultural creative genes are Kazakh, completely different to the Russian ones,” he said.

“Decolonisation is only just starting, we are beginning to realise that we were made to be ashamed of being Kazakh – as a child [in the Soviet Union] on TV you would see only Russian faces, you would read Russian fairytales,” he added.

Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine has come as a big turnoff for many in Kazakhstan regarding the Russian language, Balymbetov said.

“Because the main ‘excuse’ used by the Kremlin was that the Ukrainian language is not a proper language. It invites the question — if we do not sing in our language, do not speak it, could we suffer a similar attack?”

However, the future of Q-pop is not certain. Kazakhstan is a small market. It has no established show-business industry, and most of the new Q-pop bands and individual singers are unable to find any financial support and give up too soon.

That is also the reason why being a Q-pop artist requires more talent and strength than being a ‘factory made’ K-pop star – the Q-pop artists write their own music and lyrics.

Also, unlike South Korea, where the government has recognised K-pop’s soft power and supports it, the Kazakh government is yet to see and begin to make the most of Q-pop’s ideological and commercial potential.