This 21st-century study of past and present reciters of the Kyrgyz national epic, Manas, has just been translated from the Chinese (玛纳斯史诗歌手的研究). It includes much detail about the lives and cultivation of manaschi – mainly those based in Xinjiang – and performance of the epic, but I am perhaps most interested in the chapter entitled, The Manaschi as Shaman and Singer.
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Altaic Storytelling 