Shamshi Kaldayakov was a Kazakhstani composer. He was born Shamshi Donbaiev, but ran away from school and changed his name to avoid the police. He started playing music aged 17 and mainly wrote songs in a waltz style, but in 1956, he composed the music to the patriotic song My Kazakhstan. It was adopted in 2006 to be the Kazakhstan national anthem by Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev after a few modifications in the lyrics.
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