Altai oral epic

Columbia, MO: Center for Studies in Oral Tradition. Oral Tradition, 15/2 (2000): 215 - 229.One of the pioneering scholars in the field of multidisciplinary cultural and linguistic studies of the Altai region was the orientalist Wilhelm Radlov (1837-1918), founder of the first International Association for the exploration of Central Asia (1899), director of the Asian Museum in St. Petersburg, and a prominent collector and publisher of folklore texts. Radlov was already writing down Altai heroic songs in his youth during the 1860s, and large samples of this material, including ten epic texts (some of them consisting of short fragments), were published in St. Petersburg. In the Upper Altai region one singing style called Kai (Qaï) is of special interest.