“Sendei” and Other Kazakh-Language Pop You Should Check Out
There’s a whole lot of Kazakh-language pop, both under the rubric of “Q-pop” and outside it, that I haven’t been able to cover here. Consider the below not a full list, by any means, but just a few more samplings to get you started; and if you want to branch out, the Gakku TV YouTube channel is waiting, as is this playlist.
In no particular order:
AsSun: I know absolutely nothing about him, save that he produced the gem linked above and that his stage name does not play well with English-biased search engines. He doesn’t seem to have anything else out yet, and I am impatient: anybody who weds ABC and The 1975 this successfully needs to be making more music this instant.
Zhanar Dugalova: She started with the group KeshYou, then went solo and has become very successful doing so: winning Turkvision (with a self-composed track), welcoming people to EXPO, and also coming out with the single “Aita Bersin,” which is great, and not just because she invited AZ and ZaQ to perform on it at Gakku Melodies.
KeshYou: After Zhanar Dugalova left them (I presume) they were a trio for a while; more recently they’ve added a fourth member and dedicated themselves, in singles this year “Қалай ғана“ and “Неге?”, to a polished but imaginative combination of fashion, makeup, and earworms. (By the way, if you like the female lead in the “Sendei” video, she makes a cameo appearance in the video for “Қалай ғана.”)
Ayumi: Under the same management as Renzo (Ringo World Entertainment) and similarly prone to dancing in cleared-out industrial storage buildings, as in their 2015 hit “Hey La.”
Ziruza: Is a cutie with much potential for bop production.
Black Dial: Have a new single out just this week! yay! (now if we have to wait another month for the promised fifth single off Qarangy Zharyq, I’ll be even more convinced that the brothers Bedelkhan are trying not to step on each other’s groups’ release dates.)
Moonlight: The fourth and newest entrant in this year’s Summer of Q-Pop Boy Bands. “Tokyo” runs out of ideas midway through, but is still pretty catchy; “Qasymda bol” is slower-paced but better structured.
Newton and Crystals: Two brand-new groups I haven’t been following. Newton’s debut song is “Жалықтым”; Crystals’ is “Adastyrma.”
and finally: separate from all this, but worth mentioning, is Dimash Kudaibergen (or Kudaibergenov), who has risen to fame via a Chinese singing competition show. To give you an idea of what the fuss is all about, here he is singing “S.O.S.” from the French rock opera Starmania.
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