Kam is the Turkic word for shaman. The work is travel between realms: fetching back the fled soul of a sick person, carrying the dead to where they belong, bargaining with the spirit of the hunt or the rain.
The journey is made on the drum. The drum is both the mount — usually counted as a horse or a deer — and the rhythm of the road. The metal pieces, feathers and ribbons on the shaman's coat say which animal's strength is being carried.
Balbal's shape comes straight from this journey: starting in the Middle World, descending the seven layers of the Underworld, climbing out through the nine layers of the Sky is the shaman's route. The ribbons tied to branches and the distant drum on Shaman's Wood are that scene.