SAMRATTAMA is making indie music for an independent Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan is a young country with an old soul. Barely in its thirties since breaking free from the Soviet Union in 1991, it’s now facing what feels like a midlife crisis, torn between voices all asking the same question: who are we now? Singer-poet SAMRATTAMA, real name Samrat Irzhasov, is one of them. 

Earlier this year, the young artist performed alongside a “superband” – folk-alt collective Steppe Sons, composed of fellow Kazakh indie artists Zere, dudeontheguitar, lovozero, Балхаш снится, and Saadet Türköz – for a two-hour show at Almaty’s Tselliny Centre.  The setting couldn’t have been more symbolic: once a Soviet-era cinema, all concrete block and glass facade, the building was reborn this year as a minimalist, museum-white space; a clean slate, waiting to be rewritten. The name of the performance was Barsakelmes (literally, “the island you never return from”), which was once an island in the Aral Sea, but is now nothing but desert after the sea dried up from decades of cotton farming under the USSR.

Irzhasov explains that this concept was deeply rooted in Kazakh folklore. “It all started with the legend of Nur-Tole,” he tells Dazed. “A boy who saved the world from serpents and dragons. He came on horseback, played the kobyz, and drove the spirits back into the sea. It feels like when the [Aral] sea disappeared, the spirits came back. I really believe music can heal it again. In Kazakh mythology, sound has that kind of power.”

At times, the performance feels like an acid-soaked shamanic ritual: throat singing over electric noise, contemporary dancers twitching to an electrified dombra. It’s as if lightning were running through traditional Kazakh sounds. “I don’t know about others,” says Irzhasov. “But when old sounds meet new ones, something happens in my soul. It moves me.”

Irzhasov lives in that in-between, shaped by both Kazakh heritage and a globalized world. He’s from Kostanay, a city barely eighty kilometers from the Russian border. Soviet to the bone, all smokestacks and Khrushchyovkas, those boxy prefab concrete blocks, it was only natural that he grew up speaking Russian.

When he left his freezing hometown for Almaty, the cultural capital of the south and unavoidable stop for any artist trying to make it, a question started haunting him: “Where are you, my Kazakh within me?” he asks in “Däu Qazaq”, from his 2024 EP Mıñ Müñ (“A Thousand Sorrows”). “When I moved, I realized how different I was from other Kazakhs.”

Almaty was already in the midst of a “de-Russification”. The word "ethno" was on everyone’s lips, and in every playlist. The city had become a laboratory where artists collided in a shared experiment: rewriting what being Kazakh could sound like. "I can only speak of you through the story of the Kazakh – the tale of a batyr [warrior] and a khan [chief] whose muscles no longer fit inside my body today", Irzhasov sings in “Декоративный каза” (“Decorative Kazakh”).

“The longer I stayed [in Almaty], the more I felt a gap growing,” he tells Dazed. “I wanted to close it. To reconnect.” So he learned Kazakh, picked up the dombra and found his people at qazaq indie, a label built to pull local music out of its urban bubble.

The label’s first gig, in a tiny vinyl shop in 2017, drew over a hundred people - three times what they expected. Today, Samrattama’s songs are crossing borders. Scroll through the comments on his latest track "bitpeitin bit" and you'll find comments from Europe, South America, and beyond. Irzhasov’s music tells the story of a post-Soviet kid peeling back layers of history to find something deeply personal - and somehow universal. You don’t need to speak Russian or Kazakh to feel that.

Below, SAMRATTAMA breaks down the mysteries behind his music, from his name to his creative process. 

Your stage name, SAMRATTAMA, can be translated from Kazakh as “not Samrat.” Can you explain the meaning?

SAMRATTAMA: In Kazakh, SAMRATTAMA can be read in two ways. First, Tama is the name of my tribe. So Samrat Tama literally means ‘Samrat from the Tama tribe’. But Kazakh is full of twists and double meanings. Tama can also mean ‘don’t be’. So SAMRATTAMA can mean both ‘be Samrat’ and ‘don’t be Samrat’. 

Why ‘don’t be Samrat’? Because everyone needs their own path. It’s my way of saying, ‘This is mine, and yours might look completely different.’

What does your hometown represent for you?

SAMRATTAMA: Most of my songs were written in Kostanay. That’s where reality feels the sharpest to me. I’d even say it’s like a portal, a place where my ideas take shape.

Sometimes I identify with the city, almost like a metaphor. In my latest track ‘bitpeitin bit’, there’s a line that goes, ‘Почему громилы города курят Ауджи Куша, Костанае, Шпек и Сорняки?’ - basically, ‘Why do the guys in big cities smoke OG Kush, while in Kostanay it’s just shpek [cheap weed]?’ It’s a question about centralization, about why metropolises get everything while smaller cities are left behind. But it’s also about me. Why don’t I smoke OG Kush either? You see what I mean.

Can you explain why you describe yourself as a ‘Decorative Kazakh’ in some of your lyrics?

SAMRATTAMA: One day I wanted to buy a kobyz, but I didn’t have much money. I found one online; the guy said it had been in his family for generations. I bought it, tried to play it - nothing. Dead silence. A luthier told me it was decorative, not meant to play. Later, I told my girlfriend, a bit frustrated, and she said, ‘But that’s you. You’re decorative too.’ That moment hit me hard. That’s where the idea came from.

The new generation of artists, have suddenly been struck by the sounds of the kobyz and the dombra. They want to make something new out of them.

Have people ever told you your music is not ‘authentic’ enough?

SAMRATTAMA: Some people think I lack authenticity, and maybe in some ways that’s true. I aim for authenticity, but I don’t claim to have found it. I see myself more as an explorer.

When we make music with Steppe Sons, we listen to and work with kuys - old traditional performances that can’t really be reproduced. What we can do is recreate that state of sound using our own ears and technologies. Because a kuy isn’t just a melody; it’s a state of being.

How do you explore traditional sounds when so much of Kazakh music was lost during the Soviet era?

SAMRATTAMA: Kazakh music wasn’t completely erased. There are still schools training a lot of musicians in that tradition. I wasn’t trained, though. But that lack of training actually helps me. I don’t approach the instrument like a professional; I approach it like a caveman. When you’re alone with the instrument like that, you’re more bare, more exposed. And maybe that’s how you can get closer to the spirit of the place you’re in.

What kind of music are you drawn to these days?

SAMRATTAMA: It’s hard to choose. Lately I’ve mostly been listening to music like Asyl Mura, a Kazakh project.  I’d also say ‘La Malinche’ and ‘La mort dans la pinède’ by Feu! Chatterton. That band is so expressive, so emotional, it makes me want to do the same. Sometimes I walk, I dance a little, I even jump in the street. Once I was walking like that, and there were five soldiers marching in formation. They looked at me as if to say, ‘What’s wrong with this guy?’

Many artists in Kazakhstan are now singing in Kazakh and using traditional instruments. Do you think it’s just a trend?

SAMRATTAMA: No, not at all. It’s something deeper.  Sometimes I get this strange feeling that we, the new generation of artists, have suddenly been struck by those sounds – the sounds of the kobyz, the dombra – like they’ve finally crossed into our ears. People just want to make something new out of them. Kazakh traditional music is incredibly rich. It holds so many genres, so many layers. It’s always been alive. Why would it die now?