Brass bellowed, cymbals crashed and a snare drum kept time. Then, a choir exploded into an up-tempo march.

As the music blared over the loudspeakers of a hearing room, members of parliament looked at each other quizzically, shuffled papers and scrolled on their phones as they began listening to three finalists in late January in a competition to find Kyrgyzstan’s new national anthem.

After listening to the next two finalists – one that sounded similar to the first finalist at half speed, and the other a bright march with an air of John Philip Souza meets the Komsomol – the deputies rejected all three.

“Unfortunately, a worthy project was not written,” then-Speaker of Parliament Nurlanbek Turgunbek uulu told the legislature on January 28. 

The episode was only the latest twist in Kyrgyzstan’s year-and-a-half-long quest to replace its national anthem. The search has already involved hundreds of entries in two public contests that have failed to produce a quality alternative. 

The initiative has garnered little support beyond those competing for the 1.5-million-som ($17,000) prize for the winning anthem, and echoes the government’s controversial move in 2023 to rework the national flag as President Sadyr Japarov plays on nationalist themes and seeks to leave his mark on the country. 

On January 29, two days after the march-heavy parliamentary jam session, a new committee was announced to open a third public contest that will run until June, Kaktus, a Kyrgyz news outlet, reported.

Members of past commissions gave all manner of explanations for the inability to find an anthem deemed an improvement over the current version.

“I was surprised,” said Kadyraly Artykov, a composer and singer who judged the first contest and competed in the second. “Really, with all compositions that we have listened to, there wasn’t a satisfactory one?”

The idea to replace the national anthem came seemingly out of nowhere in October 2024, when Turgunbek uulu announced in parliament that the anthem would be changed, noting that the country had already changed the flag. Parliament adopted the current anthem, a paean to the new nation's progress and natural beauty written and composed by a quartet of Kyrgyz musicians and poets, in December 1992 to replace the anthem of the Kyrgyz SSR.

“The anthem was approved when our country had just left the USSR. It’s hard to sing. Not every Kyrgyz can perform it. It’s a march,” he told fellow deputies. “Now we’re a government that’s fully on its feet. So, we need to change the anthem to something that will be sung by every citizen.”

A week later, Japarov backed the initiative.

“What would be so bad about changing it?” he said in an interview with Kabar, the state news agency.

Over the spring of last year, the Ministry of Culture received over 700 submissions from 488 citizens and passed a subset on to a commission, Kaktus reported. 

The commission – comprising about 40 members, including musicians, poets and academics, as well as prominent citizens from other fields – met over several sessions and listened to about 50 submissions each time, according to Chynar Umetalieva-Bayalieva, a musicologist and historian who served on the commission.

Umetalieva-Bayalieva told Eurasianet she thought there were only one or two entries that might have had a claim to replace the current anthem, but they were voted down.

“There wasn’t anything interesting in the submissions,” she said. “They were just standard songs for a choir with patriotic content.”

Other commission members had a rougher experience.

“I’m a musician. I listen to music calmly, and I listen only to good music,” prominent composer Tugolbai Kazakov said. “And the first time we listened to those 170-or-so hack jobs, for me it was torture.”

The commission decided there were no suitable entries last April; a re-run contest was soon announced. This time, the commission first took submissions for lyrics, picked five and then let composers put music to the five.

Several composers quit the commission so they could compete. Artykov was one of them. 

He spent a month writing two instrumentalisations of one set of lyrics. Then, he recruited five opera singers and recorded a driving, minor-key version he felt was more faithful to Kyrgyz musical traditions, and a swelling, major-key version that was more European, he said. 

It was a tough task.

“You’ve got to listen to it and be able to sing it, and you need it to be uplifting and patriotic,” Artykov said. “We Kyrgyz are an ancient people after all. We’ve seen so much as a people: victories, enemies, and we’ve done so much. All of that had to come across in the music.”

The commission once again listened to more than a hundred submissions and picked five that were “more or less worthy for examination” by the parliament, Kazakov told Eurasianet. The Ministry of Culture picked the three versions that were played in parliament – and ultimately rejected – in late January.

In parliament “there’s not a single musician. There’s not a single composer. There’s not a single poet. And they’re saying this is how things are,” Kazakov said.

He is supportive of the idea that a new generation needs a new anthem, but after listening to more than 200 submissions over the past year, Kazakov is done judging contests, he said.

Some are not so sure another round is worth it.

“The people are already used to this anthem… It’s gotten into the blood,” said Umetalieva-Bayalieva, who has written a book on Kyrgyz music. “Opinions are divided, but I think the majority are for the old anthem.”

Artykov’s two versions were not selected to go before the parliament, but after hearing those that did make the cut, he is still probably going to submit his compositions in the next round, he said.

“I don’t want to brag,” Artykov said with a smile. “But I, as a musician, can definitely say that my compositions were better than those three.”

This article first appeared on Eurasianet here.

Alexander Thompson is a journalist based in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, reporting on current events across Central Asia. He previously worked for American newspapers, including the Charleston, S.C., Post and Courier and The Boston Globe.