Paper short abstract:

The work explores the role of akyn – a Central Asian poet-improviser - as a powerful means of ameliorating the financial literacy of the population in Kyrgyzstan, boosting trust, combating informality, indebtedness as well as anti-debt protests in the country.

Paper long abstract:

Валюта курсу акчанын сыры болот эмеспи

Exchange rate is a character of the money,

Ар акчанын өзүнчө ыры болот эмеспи

Each money has its own song.

Ачыктап даана айтканда

Frankly speaking,

Ар улуттун өзүнчө,

Each nation has

Пулу болот эмеспи

Its own currency

(excerpt from the song of Kyrgyz improvisational poet-singer Bayan Akmatov,

translated from Kyrgyz by the authors).

Within the financial literacy awareness project, the National Bank of Kyrgyz Republic (NBKR) launched a series of videos in 2019 that aimed to acquaint the population with financial terms. The NBKR deployed a traditional and historically established transmission channel to apprise the public of the bulk of the activities that the country’s central bank undertakes. The platform selected by NBKR was the voice of the akyn - a poet-improviser widely known for both the delicacy of his language as well as the freedom used in songs to criticize the existing powers and its decisions. Touching upon the various economic themes such as inflation, monetary policy, exchange rate, family budget as well as the role of the National Bank, the akyn represents, it can be argued, an intermediary figure who efficiently relays information between the official institutions and the general public.

Within the current research project, the authors examine how the NBKR deploys traditional means of art form such as the recitation performed by akyn in order to increase public awareness on key economic concepts. Provided that the country has been combatting the problem of financial illiteracy and prevalent informality which, among other things, triggered massive anti-debt movements, the usage of akyn presents a powerful means in educating the population about the financial system.

The authors will discuss the original use of the akyn tradition in history, which has been standing in the interval between the power and the population, playing the spokesman alternatively for each of them, and analyze how this association between the NBKR aims to boost public trust in country’s financial institutions as well as raise public awareness on key economic concepts.

Keywords: Akyn tradition, trust, National Bank, finance, informality, Kyrgyzstan