Forget BTS and Blackpink, it’s time for Q-pop from Kazakhstan – the new cultural phenomenon to rival K-pop
- Qazaq pop – or Q-pop, as it’s also known – is a pop music genre that has a growing number of male heartthrobs and sultry female singers
- Leading the way is boy band Ninety One, with their 2019 track Men Emes getting more than 12 million views on YouTube
Melodramatic music videos, slick dance routines and edgy street fashion: you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re watching a new K-pop group. Then you notice something is different: that spitfire rap verse and heart-wrenching chorus isn’t being sung in Korean, but Kazakh.
Qazaq pop – or Q-pop, as it’s more commonly known – is a genre that bears striking similarities to K-pop with its heartthrob boy bands, smouldering female soloists and all. It might not yet possess the same cultural cachet as K-pop, but Q-pop is making waves in Kazakhstan.
Leading the charge is boy band Ninety One. Their 2015 debut song, Ayptama, features the five members – all suitably shaggy-haired and chiselled – glowering at the camera as they bemoan a fickle lover over a peppy EDM track.
Later, they bust out a choreographed dance routine in an empty car park. It’s a reliable K-pop formula if there ever was one – member Ace was even a former trainee at K-pop titan SM Entertainment.
But it’s in their recent songs that Ninety One really started fleshing out the Q-pop formula, such as on the lead track from their 2019 album of the same name, Men Emes.
“Step by step I came shocking from a village/ All eyes on me, I speak for the sake of art and culture/Holding my flag tight in my hand, I went through hot and cold,” raps member Shýmaq in Kazakh as he sits in a traditional yurt. Later, he poses with an eagle on his arm – a nod to the ancient form of falconry practised by nomadic Kazakhs.
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Released in August 2019, the video is one of the band’s most popular thus far, with more than 12 million views on YouTube to date.
“It’s no secret that English is the most popular language in the world,” say members from Ninety One. “But we wanted to show the beauty and flexibility of our language in our songs, which is why all of them are in Kazakh.”
Ninety One’s meteoric rise has inspired other Q-pop hopefuls to take up the microphone. One of them is 17-year-old soloist Alba, who hails from a village near the country’s largest city, Almaty.
“I heard about JUZ Entertainment [Ninety One’s record label] when I was 12, because at that time, Ninety One was the most popular group in our country,” says the singer – real name Albina Bolatqyzy – who joined the label in 2018.
The Q-pop industry regularly introduces fresh talent. Boy band DNA are one such group, having debuted in June. They were formed as part of a casting call by JUZ Entertainment – a project not unlike K-pop’s idol audition system.
“If you were to look at the genre on the surface, then yes, Q-pop is similar to K-pop,” say members of the four-member group. “We can’t hide the influence of that culture on ours – plus, we’re Asian too.”
They add: “Our country itself is multinational, and different cultures have influenced us both as individuals and as musicians.”
As other experts have observed, although Q-pop was born largely as an analogue to K-pop, it is fast growing into a phenomenon of its own – one that might help shape the country’s culture in the years to come.
“Q-pop builds on young Kazakh men and women’s desire for different role models and social change,” says associate professor Roald Maliangkay of Australian National University, who is both a keen researcher of the “Korean wave” and president of the Korean Studies Association of Australasia. “What attracts the predominantly female fans to Ninety-One will be a combination of factors, but one in which a desire for a different, more modern man and defiance of Chinese and Russian cultures feature strongly.”
Similarly, anthropology professor and pop music expert Gyu Tag Lee believes that Q-pop is being used as a tool to “construct [Kazakhstan’s] national culture”.
“Because of the political condition of Kazakhstan, they need to be culturally and ethnically independent from Russia,” explains the cultural studies professor from South Korea’s George Mason University. “So while K-pop is more driven by private companies, Q-pop is entwined with Kazakhstan’s nation branding.”
The popularity that Q-pop now enjoys in Kazakhstan is a far cry from the chilly welcome that Ninety One received on their debut in 2015. The band were heavily criticised at the time no thanks to their name, which references the year Kazakhstan gained its independence from the former Soviet Union.
Given that Ninety One often default to a more metrosexual look, guyliner and all, it did not sit too well with more conservative Kazakhs either.
But with more Kazakhstanis coming around, Q-pop has fast entered the mainstream. Ninety One member ZAQ is even part of the youth organisation of Kazakhstan’s ruling political party’, Zhas Otan. In 2018, he gave a speech to the organisation about the importance of preserving the country’s national culture through modern methods – including Q-pop.
“Through our music, we want to convey our culture to the nation in a more modern form,” say the DNA members. “We want to share with the world who the descendants of the nomadic people are.”
