Archive · 2022 · From the print edition of Saturday 13 August 2022, Vol. 30, No. 9,210
CultureNo horns, please: Altyn Muuz on the road
On a summer tour of district towns, the novelty boy band found venues unwilling to book four young men in bull horns, and switched to golden argali horns.
KYZYL-ADYR — The four members of Altyn Muuz took the stage of the district club in Kyzyl-Adyr on Saturday night in sequined quilted coats and golden horns. The horns were not the ones their fans know. Instead of the bull horns of their videos, they wore the curling horns of the argali, the wild mountain sheep.
The change came early in the group's summer tour of district towns, when several venues declined to book it. Many rural Iradis regard bull horns as a bad omen, and cattle are associated with Morkhan, whom church tradition identifies with Satan. "In Talas the horns are a joke," said Nurbek Asanov. "In the villages, a bull on your head is not a joke. So we became sheep."
Altyn Muuz was formed in 2019 from the top four contestants of Jyldyz Jolu, the talent show on IradOne's youth channel. Its singles, "Kymyz Kymyz", "Morkhan Baby" and this year's "Zhylky Love", have made it a staple of weddings and children's parties. In 2021 its performance of "Morkhan Baby" on a Sunday-morning children's program drew complaints from clergy, and later broadcasts of the episode left the song out.
In Kyzyl-Adyr the hall was full of families, and a row of students at the back wore homemade cardboard horns. Most of them, too, had switched to argali.