Video by Semyon Mazepin

An original composition by Farya Faraji. The lyrics are from an excellent video by the equally excellent channel I Love Languages, who have featured this sample text in reconstructed Proto-Turkic. Please note that this is not meant to be a historical reconstruction of Old Turkic music, it’s modern music that fuses the general style of Siberian and Altaic Turkic music, using their instruments such as the dombra, traditional fiddles, jaw-harp, and a simple drum. Touman is the earliest named leader of the Xiongnu, a tribal confederation of nomads who are known to us by Chinese texts. They were present in the Eurasian Steppes from the 3rd century B.C to the first century A.D, and their empire was founded by Touman’s son, Modun. The Turkic element of the song is mainly due to its lyrics which are in Old Turkic--the ethnic identity of the Xiongnu themselves however, is heavily debated and contested in global academia; and whilst I’m certain that most Turkic people will passionately affirm that the Xiongnu were a Turkic people beyond the shadow of a doubt, I can only attest as a neutral party that, in global academia, a single consensus has not yet emerged as to their ethnolinguistic affiliation, and many competing theories exist, asserting that they were possibly Turkic, Mongolic, Yeniseian, Iranic, Uralic, or perhaps a multi-ethnic confederation comprised of many different ethnicities. Whether or not the Xiongnu were ultimately Turkic is irrelevant as far as I’m concerned with this song: its framing device works either way for me, as one can imagine Göktürks of the 6th century A.D singing about a great leader who had lived 700 years before them, whether or not that leader was of their own ethnic stock or not; which is ultimately what I wanted to do with this song--portray a fictional, imaginative scene of Turkic nomads sitting around a campfire at night and recounting the life of Touman.