The famous bard of Kyrgyz Komuz

The author presents the figure of Aleksander Zatajewicz (1869–1936), famous Russian/Soviet ethnographer and composer. Zatajewicz was of Polish descent, in years 1904–1915 he worked in Warsaw. He became a part of history of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, as he was the first to take on the challenge to collect the Kazakh and Kyrgyz melodies and folk songs and to write them down in notation. Zatajewicz zeal in this difficult task can be best illustrated by numbers. In 16 years (1920–1936) he has collected and written down 2 600 melodies and folk songs from Central Asia, Altai and Siberia, and affixed them with his own commentaries. His work is recognized and respected in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan even today