The sėsėn (Bashkir:cәсән; Russian: cэсэн) is a figure in Bashkir society equivalent to a narrator or poet, or to a bard.
Sėsėns would learn and transmit their knowledge through oral traditions. Performances, sometimes improvised, were often accompanied with a dombra or quray, traditional instruments of the Bashkir.[1] The main pieces performed were epic poems, legends, and kubair, a genre of Bashkir oral literature.[2] They played an active role in public life, and were keenly interested in people's lives. The heyday of the sėsėn was from the 16th to 18th centuries when much of kubair were composed. The banning of iyiyns, traditional meetings of Bashkirs, in the 19th century deprived sėsėns of their audience, however aytysh, traditional competitions between two performers, were widespread. In the 20th century, sėsėns have largely died out and transitioned to literary works.
Before the advent of writing, the sėsėns were considered guardians of wisdom. Several literary figures have personified that character in the 19th century, such as Salavat Julaev, Chabrau, Akmurza, Erėnsė, Kubaruš and Baik Ajdar. Ivan Lepyokhin, a Russian naturalist and explorer, described his encounter with a sėsėn: