A Study on Kaychi Tradition of Altaic Turkic People

The purpose of this study is to lay the foundation of cultural infrastructure to enhance a variety of cooperation through figuring out cultural interrelation and then expending sympathy between Korean and Altaic Turkic peoples. Our concrete goal is to find the common cultural code forgotten longtime ago for the future cultural interchange with nations belonged to the so-called Turkic Belt by studying and analyzing their intangible cultural heritage and tradition of folklore. Korean language belongs to Altaic language group in terms of linguistics, which indicates that the Korean and Turkic nations culturally came from same origin. Besides that, there are a lot of evidences that Korea has had not only cultural, but also racial affinities with Turkic nations. Most of such affinities are the vestige of ancient times that could not be found in the archive or any historic documents. However, we can trace the vestige by analyzing the Turkic, specifically the Altaic singers’ tradition that is quite comparable to the tradition of Korean classic singers.The Altaic people have preserved oral folklore tradition better than any other nation while they did not have used letters until modern times. In particular Altaic singers’ tradition reminds much of Korean way of classic singers. In this point the cultural border between two nations could be dissolved and then ancient culture and parts of history of two nations could be imagined through their oral works. In this study we cast light upon the origin of the Altaic Turks and the definition and function of “kaychi” the Altaic traditional singers. And then the study deals with the kaychi’s vocalization and execution, and their possible relationship with the shamanism as well as the difference of heroic epic poems with other songs.Through this Eurasian study we propose new cultural Silk Road strategy that Korean people could map out for the part of enhancing cultural or economic cooperation with Turkic nations in the future.