August 31, 2021 - Happy Independence Day! Today marks Kyrgyzstan’s 30th year of independence from the Soviet Union. A local teacher invited me to an event called an aitish (Айтыш). This is a Kyrgyz and Kazakh tradition where singers improvise verses as they play instruments such as the Kyrgyz komuz or the Kazakh dombra (both of these instruments are guitar-like). The singers compete against each other to see who can improvise the best verses, and they sometimes jeer playfully at each other. I was told their lines are often humorous, and indeed the audience laughed a lot. I was also told that some of the lines related to politics. I had no idea what was being said because everyone spoke in either Kyrgyz or Kazakh (from what I’ve been told these two languages are mutually intelligible, meaning that Kyrgyz speakers can understand Kazakh and vice versa), but it was really cool to experience nonetheless