Piece of Kazakh culture inside music box

Music boxes playing Kazakh folk music are a great souvenir for those who want to have a piece of Kazakhstan at home. Especially when it comes to tourists. Several hundred people from around the world have already purchased such souvenirs. And the orders keep coming, says the author of the idea Adil Zakenov. He came up with the music boxes while working in Europe.

“Originally, I wanted to reproduce the Kazakh folk melody Iligai. I started with the sample tune and tested it among my friends first. Unfortunately, no one could recognize the melody. The peculiarity of music boxes is that they can have only 18 musical notes. So, not all melodies can be reproduced,” Zakenov said.

For this reason, the music boxes have only one melody so far – “Kozіmnіn karasy”. The creator of domestic souvenirs intends to expand the range of melodies, giving preference to Kazakh folk songs. The main thing is to properly adapt them with composers for the mechanism of the music box.

The music boxes are produced in two sizes. The smaller one and the bigger one. This is a wooden patterned box with a special clasp. And if you open it you can hear the well-known melody “Kozimnin karasy”.

In addition to producing musical boxes with Abai’s song, Adil Zakenov and a friend artist create and print greeting cards in the national style. The cards are painted with traditional Kazakh patterns. They are also very popular.