EurasiaNet has a story and photos about the International Baku Jazz Festival. The photos are B&W, natch. (Check out the hair on Nathan Peck. Eerily similar to mine.)
Jazz has roots in Azerbaijan.
Jazz mugam is a home-grown specialty, a sultry combination of Azerbaijani folk music and traditional American jazz. The style reached its full fame in the 1950s and 1960s under the influence of composer Rafig Babayev and his Gaya quartet and jazz pianist and composer Vagif Mustafazadeh. These sounds gave Azerbaijani music its identity within the jazz genre. Dizzy Gillespie, the legendary American jazz trumpeter, reportedly lauded Mustafazadeh for creating “the music of the future.”
Today, Mustafazadeh’s daughter, Aziza, ranks as a star on the global jazz circuit with a fusion of classical and jazz scat styles. Another celebrity who has crossed the musical divide between East and West is Rain Sultanov, the 39-year-old jazz saxophonist whose band, The Syndicate, is based in Baku. For Sultanov, jazz is a family affair: Sultanov’s two older brothers, Rauf, a highly accomplished bass player, and Ramin, a percussionist, also perform with The Syndicate.
Here is an interview with Aziza and an article on her father.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2974 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan is the Founding Editor and Publisher of Registan.net, which he launched in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with private and government clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural and political factors shape risks and opportunities and how organizations can adjust their strategic and operational plans to account for these variables. Nathan is currently seeking research, analysis, and consulting opportunities. He can be contacted via Twitter or email.
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