Ayimkhan Shamuratova

Ayimkhan Turymbet qyzy Shamuratova was born in 1917 in Karakalpakstan into a poor peasant family. Sources disagree on the exact date (10 June, 5 June or 10 October) and most name the village of Kanlykol as her birthplace, with some giving Kungrad instead. She sang Karakalpak folk songs from childhood. From 1932 she performed with the troupes of Kungrad and then Turtkul, where she was brought into the theatre by Abdiraman Otepov, one of the founders of Karakalpak theatre, and made her debut in one-act plays by Otepov and Seyfulgabit Mazhitov.

From 1934 she worked at the Karakalpak Theatre of Musical Drama and Comedy in Nukus (then named after K. S. Stanislavsky, now after Berdakh): as an actress in 1934–1939, 1949–1951 and 1955–1988, and as a soloist of the Berdakh Karakalpak Philharmonic and the radio in 1939–1949 and 1951–1955. Encyclopedic sources say she entered the Moscow Conservatory in 1939. A mezzo-soprano, she played more than a hundred leading roles, among them Bagdagul in Mazhitov's play of that name, Aysara in Kamil Yashen's Gulsara, Aybike in Taluas, Gulparshin and Barchin in Alpamys, Raushan, Shahsanem in Garip-Ashyk, Tolgonay in The Mother's Field after Chingiz Aitmatov and Oqsuluv-ana in Forty Girls, in plays by Karakalpak, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, Uzbek and Azerbaijani dramatists.

As a concert singer she performed folk, ritual, lyrical and contemporary songs; the Karakalpak folk songs Bozatau, Ariwkhan and Aksungul became widely known in her performance, and her recordings are kept in the republican radio's golden fund. During the Second World War she performed with concert brigades at the front and with agitation troupes. A member of the Communist Party from 1957, she served as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Karakalpak ASSR in its 4th and 7th convocations.

She was named People's Artist of the Karakalpak ASSR (1940), of the Uzbek SSR (1950) and of the USSR (1968), the only Karakalpak woman to receive the last title. She was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner of Labour (one of them in 1959) and the Order of the Badge of Honour (1951), and in 2004 the Uzbek Order «For Outstanding Merit» posthumously. She wrote a memoir, My Life Is Theatre.

She was married to the writer Amet Shamuratov and raised their seven children alone after his death in 1953. She died in Nukus on 29 May 1993. A public foundation in her name was set up in Nukus in 1994, the House Museum of Amet and Ayimkhan Shamuratov opened there in the late 1990s, and the dance and ethnographic ensemble Ayimkhan Lapyzy works at it. The poet Ibrayim Yusupov dedicated the poem The Fate of an Actress to her.