Saiakbai Karalaev

Sayakbay Karalaev was a Soviet and Kyrgyz storyteller and manaschi - a reciter of the epic Kyrgyz poem Manas. His famed variant of the Manas trilogy - Manas, his son Semetey, grandson Seitek - is said to total over 500,000 lines. He was the first official manaschi of the Frunze Philarmonia, and received a monthly salary. His version of the Manas trilogy was collected 1936-1952. A critical edition of his version was attempted, under the editorship of Chingiz Aitmatov in the late 1980s; later, arguably complete editions of Manas, Semetey, and Seitek appeared in the early 2010s. A CD of recorded performances appeared in 2007. A French translation of his recitation of the epic Er Töshtük was published in 1965. He was the subject of a biographical feature film: Sayakbay - Homer of the 20th Century. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayakba...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)