The original culture of the Turkmen people, its invaluable cultural heritage is invariably in the center of attention of domestic painters. In particular, one of its most striking areas is the art of bakhshi, who are the keepers of folk art, skilled musicians and singers, skillfully revealing the national spiritual and cultural values and traditions that have developed over the centuries. The recognition of their invaluable contribution to world culture was the inclusion of the craft of making dutar, performing musical art on it and the art of bakhshi in the UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
One of the young Turkmen artists who created a whole gallery of works dedicated to the art of the Turkmen bakhshi is an artist from the Gubadag etrap of the Dashoguz velayat, now working in the capital, Merdan Kakabaev. His new series of paintings, performed mainly in the form of compositions, is also devoted to the theme of this song and musical type of folk art, including the invariable attributes of bakhshi-dutar and gidzhak. An interesting solution is the image of bakhshi against the background of the heroes of epic tales, folk tales and destans, famous representatives of this type of national art, historical architectural objects or modern beautiful new buildings, cultural events. So the author tries to convey the continuity of our best cultural traditions, originating from the depths of centuries, and the great role of bakhshi in the preservation and enhancement of artistic values and traditions.
As always, the still lifes made in his characteristic style are colorful and saturated with bright colors, where the dutar seems to glorify the Turkmen land, the generous gifts of its gardens and fields.
Merdan Kakabaev is the author of a number of paintings dedicated to the work of bakhshi. Basically, these are masterfully executed portraits of famous musicians-narrators. All of them are distinguished by the freshness of artistic vision, the brightness of color, and the harmony of color combinations. Following the traditions of creating a realistic portrait, Merdan strives in his works to accurately convey all the details that can fully reflect the inner world of the person depicted on the canvas, the whole gamut of his feelings and experiences.
In the portraits of Bayar-bakhshi, Nazar-bagh, Palta-bakhshi, Makhtumkuli Garliyev, gidzhakist Sapar Bekiyev, he managed to vividly express the individuality of each of them, felt in their views, facial expressions, great spiritual and creative power.
Merdan Kakabaev donated most of these portraits to the local history museum of the Dashoguz velayat. The fact that they found recognition among art connoisseurs is evidenced by the fact that the portraits were exhibited not only in the region, but also in the capital's museum of fine arts.
Such an interest of the artist in the work of bakhshi is quite understandable - it remains especially popular in the northern region even today. The people of Dashoguz are rightly proud of their many countrymen-bakhshis, who are widely known throughout the Turkmen people. Since December 1992, a unique museum of the bakhshi of the Dashoguz velayat has been operating in the region, the expositions of which cover more than a century of development of song and musical creativity in the region, and in the Ruhubelent etrap, not far from the mausoleum of the legendary patron of singers and musicians Ashyg Aydin pir, a monument to the dutar was erected.
