Bakir Bayakhunov

Bakir Yakhiyanovich Bayakhunov was born on 15 September 1933 in Alma-Ata, now Almaty, into the family of a veterinary surgeon. He was of Dungan heritage. He studied composition at the Kurmangazy Conservatory in Alma-Ata under Kuddus Kuzhamyarov and graduated in 1960. From 1960 to 1963 he continued his training at the Moscow Conservatory, studying composition with Mikhail Chulaki, orchestration with Dmitry Rogal-Levitsky and Yuri Fortunatov, and polyphony with Sergei Skrebkov and Vladimir Protopopov.

In 1963 Bayakhunov joined the staff of the Alma-Ata Conservatory, teaching music theory and then, from 1969 to 2008, composition. He became an associate professor in 1983 and a professor in 1991, and over more than 40 years he trained generations of Kazakh musicians. He also taught composition from 2002 to 2005 and music informatics in 2011 at the Tchaikovsky Music College in Almaty.

His output included seven symphonies: the first two on Dungan themes (1980 and 1984), a Third (1989), a Fourth devoted to archaic Kazakh music (1992), the Fifth, Aura of the East (2000 to 2002), the Sixth, Ecological (2007), and the Seventh, Korkyt (2011). Other works include the orchestral Kui (1965), a poem in memory of Masanchi, a Suite on Dungan Themes, a violin concerto and a piano concerto, the piano sonatas Echoes of Mukam and Kazakh Bachiana, the sonata Two Portraits of Beethoven for piano and timpani, string quartets, choral cycles, song cycles on verses by Omar Khayyam and Matsuo Basho, and the chamber opera On That Autumn Day (2017) about the poet Magzhan Zhumabayev. He also edited and orchestrated Xian Xinghai's symphonic poem Amangeldy.

He chaired creative commissions of the Union of Composers of Kazakhstan and served as deputy chairman of its board. He wrote critical and scholarly articles, including studies of polyphony in Kazakh dombra music and of Dungan folk songs, advised the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR on the Dungan diaspora and was the first chairman of the Dungan Cultural Centre.

Bakir Bayakhunov died on 9 October 2026, aged 93. His death was announced the same day by Kazakhstan's Ministry of Culture and Information, which offered condolences to his family, colleagues and students and said his works had masterfully joined Kazakh musical heritage and the melodies of Eastern peoples with European academic traditions. The cause of death was not made public, and details of the farewell had not been announced at the time of the first reports.

Bayakhunov is remembered as the first professional Dungan composer and as a teacher who shaped Kazakhstan's school of composition. His symphonies and chamber works brought Dungan, Kazakh, Chinese and other Eastern musical traditions into the language of European classical music, and his research and community work helped preserve Dungan musical culture.