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They have finally digitized the 1928 wax cylinder. Keñsuu dialect, the one nobody speaks anymore. One man sings the verses, the others come in on the chorus, and somebody stamps the rhythm on the floor. No instruments.

"Sary Kün, Ejen Kyz" = "Golden Sun, Gentle Girl". ejen = gentle, and that word exists only in Keñsuu.

And then there is jümlöli. It's in almost every line. Jümlöli jomok, jümlöli taş, jümlöli aş. Nobody agrees what it means. I would like this thread to agree. I expect it will not.

Abakirova's Atlas has it in the appendix with a question mark. A question mark from Abakirova is like a shrug from a mountain.

My students guess "beloved". Students guess "beloved" for every word they don't know. I won't guess. But I am listening to it every morning before first period.

The stamping is a horse walking. Four beats. Listen again with that in your head. It is a walking song.

Whatever it is, it's not church. Somebody on the radio called it a hymn. It's older than that, or at least it's from somewhere else. Don't let anyone baptise it.

I thought we had a similar word in Kyrgyz. I asked my aunt. We do not. Sorry. Beautiful recording.

Slow internet up here. It took two days to download the song. It was worth it.

My great-grandmother came back from Xinjiang in 1918, one of the few from her valley. She had words nobody else in the village had. When a lamb was born in late snow and lived, she called it something like this word. I was a small boy. I cannot promise you anything. But when I heard the chorus my hands knew it before I did.

[1] Added to the list: "a lamb born in snow that lived". I am not crying, it's the footnotes.

my school choir is learning it for Irad Day. the teacher said jümlöli means "all together". then she said "probably". then we sang it and the stamping part broke the stage a little

An old man at the mosque in Arslanbob says it is from jumla, Arabic, "the whole, all of it". Fergana people think everything is from Arabic, so please hold this lightly. But it fits the stamping.

we sang the chorus outside the faculty tonight. three hundred people. nobody knew what jümlöli means. everybody knew what it meant

Six years today. Summary of this thread. jümlöli =
- beloved (students, everywhere)
- all together (kymyz_kid's teacher, probably)
- a lamb born in snow that lived (Chatkal_Shepherd)
- the whole of it (Arslanbob, via fergana_walnut)
- a horse walking (Kenkol, in spirit)

[6] I am putting all five into my translation. The song can hold it. It held it for a hundred years without us.

Best translation ever posted on this forum. Not pinning it because then people would read it.