The Semantic Role of Traditional Music Culture in the Nomadic Mentality of the Kazakhs

Abstract Value orientations formed by centuries of historical and cultural experience characterise the deep level of collective and individual consciousness, mentally they are people’s life and practical attitudes, emotional preferences, stable images of the world, peculiar to a given community and its cultural tradition. Mentality also plays a decisive role in the development and formation of ethno–cultural identity. The article considers some peculiarities of the nomadic mentality of the Kazakhs, manifested in the content of music traditional art of the Kazakhs, as well as in the world of feelings, emotions and beliefs, bonded by the idea of the unity of nature and man. The author concludes that these vital bases of the Kazakh people have historically set their mentality as the strategy of existence and are reflected in the complicated processes of genesis of the Kazakh traditional musical culture, which nature is vividly expressed even up to date. Besides, nowadays, in the century of global transformations and integrations, the understanding of the nature of a traditional nomadic mentality can become one of the ways to a meaningful movement towards modernization and a dialogue of the world cultures, based on the respect of the national cultural values. Thus, the article highlights the importance of making musical cultural traditions a powerful tool for self-development and preservation of ethnic and cultural identity. The necessity of this tool has become even more comprehensible in the 21st century, the age of unification of cultures. In general, attention is drawn to the use of the mental resource of the people (nation) not only as a potential catalyst of modernization processes, but also as an important factor in national and, more broadly, civilizational security.