Text and photos by Jeff Greene 

Baku, modern and ancient

The city of Baku, the capitol of Azerbaijan, located below the Caucasus Mountains on the edge of the Caspian Sea, is a fascinating blend of east and west, old and new. In the late 1800s, numerous “oil barons’ mansions” were built alongside the existing ancient Islamic walled city in a strange mixture of architectural styles that mixed European classical, Art Nouveau with Persian eclecticism. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago, Baku has experienced another oil-fueled building boom of modern skyscrapers. But nothing seems to capture the essence of the Azerbaijan psyche the way that traditional Mugham music does. 

The two Jeff's with the staff of the conservatory

I have several Azeri friends, and over the years, numerous times they have invited me to their country, but when my dear friend, Jeffrey Werbock, asked me if I would like to accompany him to make a documentary on the Azeri art music, Mugham, I knew it was the right time to say Yes. Jeffrey is an American, an accomplished mugham musician, who for 30 years has embraced Azerbaijan as his adopted country. He has steeped himself in the culture and particularly the music and has become a cultural ambassador for all things Azeri. 

I arrived in Baku in late June 2010 and immediately set about trying to take the pulse of the city by wandering the narrow alleys of the old town and the wide boulevards and parks that face the polluted Caspian Sea. Azerbaijan is a country of contradictions: a modern secular Islamic society with a Turkic language; a variety of topography from verdant farmland to forested high mountains and scorching badland desert. Ancient mountain Jews, Sufi saints and nouveau riche jet-setters all seem to coexist peaceably with one another. 

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Jeffrey called me in the evening and said let’s go find some live music. We went out to a local restaurant where traditional music is played and once they recognized Jeffrey of course they asked him to play. I had heard that there was also a club where they play Azeri jazz, but by the time we arrived there the musicians were just packing up there instruments. 

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Eldar admiring the mountains from a rooftop in Xinaliq.The dung paddies are used for fuel.

Caucasus

Two days later we were to film at a local music school for teenagers learning traditional mugham. Having the next days free, I called my old friend Eldar, an artist and wise Sufi philosopher. Since he had a car, we decided to spend the days seeing a little of the country. Our first stop was a Sufi shrine attended to by a midget in the lunar landscape of Gobustan –a UNESCO world heritage site, a mystical place with stone-age petroglyphs and the aura of another time and place. The following day we took a trip 8 hours high into the Caucasus mountains to a tiny village which has only had a road to the outside world for less than a decade (and in some places along the way there was no roads at all due to landslides and avalanches). The 1500 people of this village speak their own language, linguistically unlike any other in the region. I asked about the music there and was treated to some unaccompanied vocal Sufi chants. On the way back, we stopped in Quba for dinner and visited the synagogue of the “mountain Jews” who have lived peacefully in the Caucasus – some say since their exile from Babylon. 

The synagoge in the jewish quarter of Quba, Krasnaya Slobada where the mountain jews have lived continuously and peacefully for close to 2000 years.

The highlight of my trip, however, was the filming at the youth music school. Mugham is more than just a music of national identity. A highly complex form of musical poetry, open to the personal emotional interpretation of the musician, while still following a fixed set of rules and principles, it is based on the Islamic modal system, similar to the Persian Radif and Turkish Makam or Iraqi Maqam. Azeri mugham is characterized by a large degree of microtonal ornamentation and improvisation, consisting of intricate melodic variations and chromatisms alternating between metered and un-metered sections which generally evolve as a dramatic unfolding during the performance, typically with increasing intensity and rising pitch. The instrumentation traditionally consists of the Azeri Tar (a long-neck, waisted skin-faced lute distinct from the Iranian Tar by the addition of a greater number of strings); the Kamancheh, a bowed spike fiddle; the Ghaval, a frame drum with one set of metal hoop jingles; and of course the voice which can be very melismatic almost to the point of yodeling. In modern times, one also finds the Garmon, a microtonally tuned accordian, as well as the Balaban (double reed aerophone similar to the Armenian Duduk). 

Garmon player

The students were all excited to participate in the documentary and one after the other they showed us their virtuosity. There was one ensemble of refugees from Karabakh which performed a folksong telling of longing for their lost homeland and even though the film crew might not have understood the words, everyone felt the emotions; there were more than a couple of moist eyes in the room. The real fun came after the recitals as all the musicians filled the hallways and began to spontaneously play with us Americans. Singing and dancing continued until it was time to leave.

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Read Jeff Greene’s previous article.