120 International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, 2021, 10, 120-132 E-ISSN: 1929-4409/21 © 2021 Lifescience Global Contemporary Song Folklore of the Kazakhs of the South-West Zhetysu: The Experience of Musical and Regional Research B.Z. Babizhan * , A.R. Berdibay, A.B. Baisakalova, Y.T. Chukmanov and A.N. Ulkenbaeva Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory, Almaty, 90, Abylai Khan Avenue, 050000, Kazakhstan Abstract: Kazakh music and dance has many unique features but also has many things in common with the music and dance of Mongolia and Central Asia. For Kazakhs the summer has traditionally been the best time for merry-making. They often sing and dance during summer nights on the pastures. The relevance of the study is due to the insufficient study of the Kazakh song folklore of the south-western part of Zhetysu, represented by eight districts of the borderland of Almaty and Zhambyl regions with Kyrgyzstan. This article is aimed at identifying the genre composition of the song folklore of the local tradition, the conditions of its existence, as well as the peculiarities of their musical-poetic structure and musical language. The results of this research are a contribution to the musical archeology of Kazakhstan. They can also be used in the study of the stylistic originality of the song folklore of the Kyrgyz and Uzbeks living in the border regions of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Keywords: Ritual folklore, Folk song, Qaraöleñ (traditional Kazakh poetry), Musical and stylistic features, Region, Genre, Culture, Tradition. 1. INTRODUCTION In the statement of the researcher of the Mongolian song K. Yatskovskaya (1988) stated that: “The fate of the folk song was to become the keeper of artistic traditions, to convey to us the aesthetic ideal, the image of the indivisibility of the world, which was born among the nomads of Central Asia” contains the idea of the integrity of the understanding of the world of the peoples of a large geographic region, to which, as you know, the Kazakhs belong. And if the understanding of the picture of the world, the relationship of the individual with the Cosmos, expressed by the means of traditional poetics, were generally national in nature, the musical embodiment of artistic and poetic images was carried out in a variety of regional styles. The question of the regional belonging of the samples of musical-poetic, instrumental and dance genres of traditional art and the reasons for their emergence is one of the frequently discussed in the ethnographic sciences. Thus, the ethnomusicologist V. Shchurov (2013) believes that “national musical culture is formed from the totality of local traditions. Possessing integrity, monolithicity, it at the same time unites various, sometimes sharply contrasting phenomena. When clarifying the reasons for the formation of local traditions in each specific case, it is necessary to take into account the aggregate diverse - historical, economic, natural and other factors that *Address correspondence to this author at the Kurmangazy Kazakh National Conservatory, Almaty, 90, Abylai Khan Avenue, 050000, Kazakhstan; Tel: 87474112082; E-mail: abahman.aa@yahoo.com contributed to the cultural consolidation of people in that or another region and thereby contributed to the emergence of separate forms of traditional creativity. A similar idea about the importance of regional styles in the formation of national song art and the prerequisites for their emergence is expressed by the researcher of folklore B. Putilov (1994). The author writes: “Traditional folk culture in its specific content is always regional and local. Its natural, normal life is tied to the life of a certain, limited by one or another framework, a collective, is included in its activity, it is necessary for it and is regulated by its characteristic social and everyday norms. Since the ethnic collective occupies a certain historically formed space, which has its own geographical, natural and other characteristics, then its traditional culture is regional both in the historical, social and spatial terms”. Noticing at the beginning of the 20s of the last century, the conditioning of the regional musical features of Kazakh songs with the landscape of the area, climatic conditions of nomadism, and other conditions, the famous musical ethnographer A. Zataevich (1963) wrote: “beautiful landshats, Akmola and Semipalatinsk provinces, picturesque mountains, fast streams and rivers, green groves and bird forest hubbub - all this finds an undoubted echo in the rhythmic and figurative revival of the songs of East Kazakhstan, in their melodic flowery and inclination to virtuoso.Not so in the songs of western and southwestern Kazakhstan (Bukeevskaya province and Adayevsky district). Endless plains, desert saline steppes, poverty of flora and fauna, dull monotony of a flat and low-lying sea coast - all this adjusts to