Filed under: Kazakhstan
The Republic of Kazakhstan is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Europe. The ninth largest country in the world by land area, it is also the world’s largest landlocked country; its territory of 2,727,300 square kilometres (1,053,000 sq mi) is larger than Western Europe. It is neighbored by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and also borders on a significant part of the Caspian Sea.
Controlled by the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union until it’s independence in 1991 – the last Soviet republic to do so – Kazakhstan’s folk and classical traditions are connected with ethnic Russian music and European classical music. Prior to the 20th century, Kazakh folk music had been collected and studied by ethnographic research teams. After the Russian revolution, what little that was recorded had to be approved by the censors at the Russian state-owned and operated Μелодия (Melodiya) label.
Дос-Мукасан (Dos-Mukasan) were the first modern pop music group in Kazakhstan. They formed in 1967 at the Kazakh Polytechnic Institute in the former capitol city of Almaty. The band’s name was derived from the first syllable of each the founding member’s names: Dosym Suleev, Murat Kusainov, Kamit Sanbaev, and “Sanya” Alexander Litvinov. Although their discography seems to end somewhere in the mid 80s, judging by the many clips on YouTube they are apparently still active to this day.
If you have any further information on Дос-Мукасан, please contact me or leave a comment.
Catalog number… Well, there isn’t one. These songs were included on a flexi-disc – one of six – with the December 1977 issue of Kpyƨoзop (Krugozor) magazine, which was published by the Μелодия label.
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Radiodiffusion Internasionaal Annexe 
Dos Mukasan was one of the best bands Kazakhstan had! I have 45 MP3s by them. They are actually not Kazakhs but Tatars. Kazakhstan was truly an international “country.” They had all kinds of folks living there.
Comment by Hilary June 28, 2012 @ 7:41 pmI believe that their first Melodiya 45 pressing was in 71-1972 (I think there was another the following year, and then another later in the 1970s/early 1980s with more disco), but they were already playing at festivals all over Communist-controlled Eurasia by then. They still play reunion concerts, but I’m pretty sure that they’ve had solo careers – I remember checking out some of their personal websites a bit ago. Since they were the biggest thing out of Kazakhstan, they have some fairly well-produced music videos. Easily one of my favorite bands. More here at: http://svet-mir-pravda.tumblr.com/post/42642641261/track-list-great-mod-almaty-a-heavy-dose-of
Comment by Svetlana December 2, 2014 @ 8:11 pmAlso, the second song is called “Toi Zhiri” – not sure why the flexi-disk mislabeled it as Wedding Song.
Comment by Svetlana December 2, 2014 @ 9:08 pm