---
annotations_creators:
  - expert-generated
language_creators:
  - expert-generated
languages:
  - kk
license:
  - cc-by-nc-4.0
multilinguality:
  - monolingual
pretty_name: Kazakh Traditional Audio Archive
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K
source_datasets:
  - original
task_categories:
  - audio-classification
  - automatic-speech-recognition
  - text-to-speech
task_ids:
  - multi-class-audio-classification
  - automatic-speech-recognition
  - text-to-speech
---

# Dataset Card for Kazakh Traditional Audio Archive

## Dataset Summary

The **Kazakh Traditional Audio Archive** is a curated open dataset containing rare and historical audio recordings from Kazakh culture. The dataset includes traditional musical forms such as *kui*, *zhyr/terme*, folk and composed songs, lullabies, retro music, and audio fairy tales.

These audio files are designed for use in machine learning tasks including ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition), TTS (Text-to-Speech), music classification, and ethnomusicological research.

## Supported Tasks and Leaderboards

### Supported Tasks:
- `audio-classification`: Classifying audio by genre or type (e.g., kui, zhyr, retro)
- `automatic-speech-recognition`: Recognizing lyrics or speech in Kazakh
- `text-to-speech`: Synthesizing culturally appropriate TTS models
- `audio-generation` and `audio-captioning` (experimental)

## Languages
The primary language of the dataset is **Kazakh** (`kk`).

## Dataset Structure

### Data Fields
Each entry in the dataset has the following metadata:

- `file`: Relative path to audio file
- `title`: Name of the piece
- `type`: One of `kui`, `zhyr_terme`, `an_kompozitor`, `ertegi`, `besik`, `retro`
- `language`: Always `"kk"` (Kazakh)
- `duration`: Duration of the audio in seconds

### Example:
```json
{
  "file": "data/kui/kui_001.wav",
  "title": "Saryzhailau",
  "type": "kui",
  "language": "kk",
  "duration": 125.4
}
```

### Data Splits
The dataset has a single `train` split (default for cultural datasets).

## Dataset Creation

### Source Data
The recordings were collected from public domain sources and cultural preservation projects. All materials are either:
- Traditional public domain content
- Released by contributors for non-commercial research and academic purposes

### Annotations
Metadata annotations were manually created by linguistic and cultural experts.

## Licensing

This dataset is licensed under the **Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0)**.  
It may be used freely for research and non-commercial applications. Commercial use is prohibited.

## Citation

If you use this dataset in your research or application, please cite as:

```bibtex
@misc{kazakh_audio_2025,
  title={Kazakh Traditional Audio Archive},
  author={Republican Television and Radio Corporation "Kazakhstan"},
  year={2025},
  howpublished={\url{https://huggingface.co/datasets/rtrk/kazakh-traditional-audio}},
  note={Accessed April 2025}
}
```

## Contributions

Curated and published by **Republican Television and Radio Corporation "Kazakhstan"**.  
Pull requests and metadata improvements are welcome.