On 28 July 2025, as the skirl of bagpipes echoed across the windswept greens of President Trump’s Turnberry golf resort, two world leaders met under the Scottish flag. U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and U.S. President Donald Trump gathered for “wide-ranging talks” on trade and global conflicts — yet it was the sound of a Scottish pipe band that first captured attention. For President Trump, whose mother was born in the Outer Hebrides, the music carried a personal resonance.
The bagpipe, long a symbol of Scotland’s spirit, continues to speak across generations and continents — from clan gatherings and state ceremonies to moments of diplomacy. Its sound is unmistakably Scottish: bold, mournful, and proud. Yet across the ancient world, far beyond the Highlands, other peoples once drew the same haunting tones from leather and reed — among them the nomads of what is now Kazakhstan.
Echoes from the East
Centuries before the first Highland marches, nomadic Turkic peoples were playing an instrument remarkably similar in design — the zhelbuaz. Crafted from goat or sheepskin and fitted with two or more reed pipes, it produced the same soulful harmony that defines the modern bagpipe. When filled with air and played from horseback or during ceremonies, it created a sound that was at once haunting and powerful, much like the music that still moves crowds today.
As the people of the Central Asian steppes were largely nomadic for most of their history, there is scant hard evidence. However, early scholars described the zhelbuaz (or mes-syrnai) as an ancient wind instrument made from a single piece of animal skin or stomach. Al-Farabi wrote of a “wineskin flute” among the Turkic tribes, and the Chinese traveler Wen Sun, visiting the Orkhon region in the 7th century, reportedly recorded a Turk playing a “leather instrument with two pipes, whose sound deepens the sadness of the mourners.”
The Journey Westward
Over centuries, the idea of the air-filled reed instrument migrated westward — first through trade and migration, and then through cultural contact. Variants appeared in Eastern Europe: the duda in Poland, the tulum in Azerbaijan, and the musette in France. Linguists note that modern terms such as duu (meaning “song” in Mongolian) and düdük (meaning “whistle” in Turkish) suggest a shared onomatopoetic pattern for wind instruments and vocal sound across Eurasia, hinting at, though not proving, a linguistic thread connecting these distant traditions.
But it was in Scotland that the instrument found its fullest voice. There, in the hands of Highland clans, it became more than music — it became identity. The Great Highland Bagpipe emerged as a call to arms, a hymn of remembrance, and a symbol of a people’s endurance. Its power lies not just in its sound, but in what it represents: honor, courage, and belonging.
Image: Ykhlas Museum of Folk Musical Instruments
The Zhelbuaz Remembered
In Kazakhstan, the zhelbuaz gradually disappeared from everyday life, its haunting voice surviving only in oral memory and museum collections.
Today, musician Abzal Arykbaev of the Turan Ethno Folk Band describes the zhelbuaz’s distinctive power: “The unique feature of this instrument is that it allows you to produce two different tones simultaneously.”
Samat Malimbay, conductor, composer, and senior lecturer at the Kazakh National Pedagogical University, told The Times of Central Asia, “The instrument is quite difficult to make. Nomads who were engaged in cattle breeding made it from the skin or stomach of a lamb or goat, while residents of coastal areas made it from the stomach of a seal. The skin is carefully cleaned of wool, soaked, softened, stretched, and dried. Then, holes were made in two places for sound, into which reed pipes were inserted. After installing the pipes, the edges of the instrument were carefully processed, and the surface was painted with natural paint made from lichen.
“Usually, the instrument is 65-70 cm long and 30-35 cm wide, and is also known by the names “zhel-kobyz,” “kuyk-kep,” “mes-kobyz,” and “zhel-saz.” Since the shape of the instrument resembles the swollen udder of a pregnant cow, it was named zhelbuaz (literally “inflated with air”).
“There is a scientific opinion that the Kazakh kobyz is the ancestor of instruments such as the violin, viola, and cello. It is believed that the kobyz was brought to Europe by the Huns. Therefore, it is possible that the zhelbuaz could have also come to Europe with the Huns and, perhaps, became the ancestor of the Scottish bagpipes.”
According to Malimbay, the zhelbauz was first introduced into an orchestra by conductor and composer Nurgisa Tlendiev. In 1982, when creating the Otyrar Sazy folk and ethnographic orchestra, Tlendiev ordered a zhelbauz in Latvia and then adapted Ykylas’s kuy (national instrumental piece) “Erden” for it.
“Unfortunately, there are currently no people left who know how to play this instrument,” Malimbay told TCA. Nurgisa Tlendiev once taught a musician to play it, but that person has since passed away.”
Kindred Spirits Across the Steppe and the Glen
That same dual resonance of the zhelbauz — one tone steady and grounding, the other soaring and expressive — finds an echo in the Great Highland Bagpipe, a reminder that across continents and centuries, human creativity has discovered remarkably similar ways to voice emotion through sound.
In Scotland, the bagpipe represents independence, strength, and unity — a music that has rallied clans, celebrated victories, and endured through centuries of change. Its sound belongs to the mountains and the marches, to a people who have never forgotten who they are.
In Kazakhstan, the ancient zhelbuaz spoke to a similar spirit. The nomadic peoples of the steppe were unbound, self-reliant, and resilient — survivors in vast, untamed lands. While evidence of the zhelbuaz’s use among early nomads is limited, its rediscovery evokes that same ethos of endurance and freedom. It is no surprise that they, too, would have cherished an early form of the bagpipe: an instrument capable of capturing both the loneliness and the freedom of life beneath the endless sky.
Separated by geography but united by instinct, these two traditions reveal the timeless truth that a human heart filled with courage and longing produces the same music everywhere.
