A short video is dedicated to the biggest Yakut national holiday called Ysyakh (Yhyakh). Celebrated annually in June.
Created by Vladimir Moonkuev. Music by Sasha Lukin.
No words. The video conveys all the message. Enjoy! Certainly, you’re welcome to Yakutia in summer!
An image from Days of Yakutia in Toronto, Canada.
What a great news! Sardana Savvina let me know that two Yakutian films are going to participate at The Imagine Native Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, Canada. They will be screened at Bell Light BOX Movie Theater on October 22nd and 23rd, 2011.
If by any chance you appeared to be in Toronto on those days, don’t miss the chance to visit the film festival and watch Yakutian movies. You won’t regret ever! Check the screening schedule.
Further, find films description and get energized by the While the Wind Blows movie trailer with a song performed by the famous Yakut rock band “103″ and Varya Maksimova.
Good news for world music admirers and fans of the Ayarkhaan trio. July 24, 2011, Albina Degtyareva‘s Ayarkhaan Trio performed at the BBC Proms (Royal Albert Hall) in London, UK.
“Three Sakha women from Siberia blew the audience away with their unearthly sounds of jew’s harp and animal imitation. It was truly amazing,” Misha Maltsev reports.
Here in historical videos, you can see how Yhyakh (Ысыах in Russian), the Yakut national holiday, was celebrated in the 1960s. For the long period, the Soviets prohibited the Yakuts to hold its traditional summer event, but eventually, since 1941, allowed.
Yhyakh is the celebration of the summer solstice. Dedicated to the spirits of Ajyy and nature revival. Followed with the rising sun worship ceremonies, abundant food, kumis (also spelled kumiss, koumiss or kumys; it’s the horse milk) drinking, national sports games, horse races.
Further, please, find the second historical video. Read the rest of this entry…
In old times, Yakut women loved to wear silver adornments, as the silver was the most respected precious metal. Any silver accessory or ornament enhanced the beauty or status of the wearer. Later, gold gained its popularity and earned its own place in female collections.
Nowadays, Yakut wally are popular as well. They are usually worn on traditional holidays, for instance, in the course of Ysyakh, the Yakut summer solstice celebration. How they looked like in the past might be seen in Yakutia Tresuary Museum in Yakutsk.
Hereby, please, see 17 images of Yakut traditional adornments made out of silver and gold, namely necklaces, pendants, earrings, bracelets.
Enjoy khomus (Yakut Jew’s harp) music and images of Yakutia in the amazing video slideshow created by Marianna Leontieva in 2008. The author lives in Moscow and she called the video “Khomus… A Yakutian’s Nostalgia…” Think, no additional info is required.
By the way, Yakutsk will host the 7th International Jew’s Harp Society Congress on June 23-26, 2011. It will be held right before the Yasyakh national holiday celebration in the area of Ys Khatyn near Yakutsk. My god, my fingers are crossed, don’t want to miss this must-be-awesome event.
Download the Congress Program (pdf, 525 Kb).
Look at what type of fur clothes the Sakha people had in the past. A play staged by the Sakha Theater in Yakutsk, Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), Russia.
More videos, photos and posts about Sakha Theater.
Platon Oyunsky statue on Orzhanikidze Square in Yakutsk. *To enlarge the image, click on it.
A book image of Platon Oyunsky
Always wanted to write about Platon Oyunsky, a Soviet Yakut statesman, writer and translator, a co-founder of modern Yakut literature, but I didn’t know how to do that. He is really a big man of history of the Republic of Sakha. Many Yakutian scientists wrote many serious works about this personage… and unconsciously I considered the task of writing about him to be impossible.
And you know what happened? One morning I was heading to my work place. It was in the early winter. I was passing Ordzhanikidze Square, when I saw a man cleaning the stature of Platon Oyunsky from snow.
It was so fascinating to see how the man was doing his job that I took a picture of his brushing work, uploaded the photo to my TwitPic account and soon got series of replies from a Yakutsk-based guy in the form of short information of who Mr. Oyunsky was.
I said, “Wow!” That guy, named Petr Petrov, was pretty serious and tried to overflow my stream stressing the importance of the historic hero. I wrote to him, “Do you have more text in English?” He, “Yes, I’ve just finished one.”
Below, please, find Petr’s text. It appeared to be pretty short, however, he wrote it very sincerely.
Think you will like Evgenia Arbugaeva‘s photographs of the Even girls living in the settlement of Topolinoe, Yakutia’s Tomponsky region, Siberia/Russia. All of them are very impressive and beautiful.
In pictures you can see the girls of the Baishevs, who are well known in Yakutia (Siberia, Russia) for their attempts to keep the Even culture safe, untouched and authentic. They are reindeer herders and they keep their own deer in the depth of the Verkhoyansky mountain area.
Evgenia is a young photographer. She is a big fan of the nomadic people. A few years ago she published a book with her photographs of Siberian nomads. Yup, it is dedicated to the Even people. Currently Evgenia is taking photography courses in New York.
Our Yakutia photo exhibit in Brooklyn, New York City. Photo by Gale Krylova.
Thomas Ross Miller, the curator of our joint “On the Road of Bones” photo exhibit in Brooklyn, NYC, informs that a couple of major New York newspapers have listed this Friday night’s open house reception at the Kris Waldherr Art and Words Studio Gallery in their events pages. Woo hoo! Many visitors and reporters are expected to come to that event on October 15th, 2010.
More NY exhibit details are available in the previous post. You might also wish to check out the exhibition schedule at http://ontheroadofbones.com/.
Meanwhile, hereby I present our curator Thomas Ross Miller’s statement in regards to the exhibition. What you are going to read further, convinced NYC-based culture editors to do what they did. Read the rest of this entry…
We blog about the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the biggest & coldest region in Russia's Siberia. Also known as Yakutia. My honor to have been born and live in such a beautiful land! ~ Bolot.
