In this article, the author reveals the main features of the creation and performance of works in Ashik poetry, which is the oral work of Turkish poets and singers, formed into an original powerful tradition by the XVII century. The analysis of these processes reveals the complex nature of this type of creativity, in which elements of two forms of literature - folklore and literature-are intertwined. The author defines the typology of Ashik art, highlighting such fundamental categories as variability and improvisationality, on the one hand, and authorship, on the other. This synthesis of heterogeneous features determines, in the author's opinion, the uniqueness of Ashik poetry. Keywords: ashyk, Ashyk poetry, folklore, individual author's creativity. Ashik art is an oral individual author's creativity of Turkish poets who perform songs to the accompaniment of the stringed musical instrument saza. Ashik poetry, the genetic source of which, like the art of Meddakh storytellers, should be considered the Turkic heroic epic performed by ozon singers, originated in the XV-XIV centuries, and by the XVII century it had turned into a powerful original tradition with a stable range of poetic motifs and images, a genre system and stylistic features. Born in the bosom of folklore and without interrupting the artistic roll call with it, Ashik creativity throughout its development closely interacted with divan literature and Tekke1 The presence of many different roots in the" genealogy " of the Ashik tradition determines the complex nature of this cultural phenomenon, which manifests itself both at the level of creation and at the level of existence of songs. This article is devoted to the peculiarities of these processes. The repertoire of each ashyk included both foreign songs belonging to other poets and his own works. The songs sung by ashik from his fellow artists formed the " golden fund "of the Ashik tradition, and at the initial stage of training, Ashik had to memorize a c ... Read more