A MAN WHO SHAKED THE WORLD

Tourists walking in the Old City often stop in front of a memorial plaque on house number 4 on Vagif Mustafazadeh Street, which reads that the founder of mugham-jazz, pianist, and composer Vagif Mustafazadeh lived here. Gadget fans immediately start searching the Web and after reading some bits of concise information about the apartment-museum of the brilliant musician, rush to the specified address. Here, in a three-room apartment where Vagif spent most of his life, they find what they were looking for: comprehensive information about his genealogy, professional and artistic development, creative search in the art of mugham-jazz. Photographs, books, portraits, sculptures, numerous posters, personal and household items are just a short list of what is carefully stored by Vagif's cousin, the director of the museum, Afag-khanim Aliyeva.

Her source of life

Vagif died at the age of 39. He died unexpectedly, on December 16, 1979, during a concert in Tashkent, Uzbekistan performing his composition Waiting for Aziza. Vagif’s death has terribly hit his mother, Zivar-khanim. The loss of a child is not just a grief or a tragic accident. Tears and words cannot express this tragic injustice. This is intolerable! It seems that she survived only because she wanted to extend his son’s life by making his memory live in his apartment museum. Vagif grew up here, in the Old City, where each cobblestone bears his footprints and where heard and reproduced Bayati Shiraz for the first time at the age of three, listening to mother’s piano performances. And suddenly he has gone away. He just stopped being! It is terrible. It is irreparable. She was inconsolable, and only her ultimate goal - to gather as much information as possible about the creative life and achievements of her son - prolonged her life, making it justified. It took ten years to collect all kinds of certificates and documents. In 1989, the Minister of Culture Polad Bulbuloghlu decreed to establish a memorial apartment-museum in the house where the brilliant composer and musician lived. It became a branch of the Museum of Musical Art. As decreed by the President of Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev, Zivar-khanim, who has handed over all the household items and exhibits to the state, received an apartment in downtown Baku, along Nizami Street. Later, when the director of the museum, Afag-khanim, made an overhaul of the museum in 2005 adding extra three rooms to the museum, the incumbent President Ilham Aliyev ordered to provide Afag-khanim with an apartment in the city centre. Now she says with pride and gratitude that only our president can be so noble, sympathetic, and just.

Life after life

Vagif was growing up just like all his peers in the Old City: spending time with his friends and studying at music school. When he was ten, his neighbourhood recognized him as the most talented singer of meykhana. At nights, he used to listen to ‘forbidden jazz music’ on BBC, and then, along with his friend from the music school, Vagif Samadoghlu, would analyse musical sketches, preludes, etudes (including Rachmaninov’s) looking for jazz beats in classical works: seventh chords, specific rhythm syncopation. He has always been a man of honour and fought, if necessary, to restore justice. His bright, kind, fair, simple and special personality was appealing. Now he lives in a biography book written by Rauf Farhadov and published by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, as well as in photographs, documents, articles, concert records, discs released by the museum, memorial events, music concerts, and competitions.

In 1997, at the request of the museum's director, President Heydar Aliyev ordered the establishment of the Vagif Mustafazadeh Foundation. The goal and objectives are to preserve and popularise the creative heritage, to help and support jazz musicians, to release musical albums. On March 16, on Vagif’s birthday, and on December 16, the day of his death, students of musical schools visit the museum and perform his music compositions as a tribute to the master. The museum also hosts memorial events on these days at large concert halls, including the Heydar Aliyev Palace. Musical events dedicated to the memory of Vagif Mustafazadeh are also held at various educational institutions (not only musical ones) on a regular basis.

L. Tolstoy: “Music is a transcript of feelings”

Vagif Mustafazadeh became a legend, glory, pride and wealth of the nation. According to the memoirs of his friends and relatives, he was a humble, easy-to-please, and simple genius from the Old City. A genius who could not be practical, rational, and mercenary. But he was able to be a reliable friend and live not with the mind but with the heart. An unusual ordinary person. A modest genius who has left almost 1,300 musical works, a genius who devised the term Azerbaijani jazz and promoted it at global scale. Thanks to Vagif, a simple guy from the Old City, whose name is on par with the names of his idols Bill Evans and Coltrane, the whole world has a phenomenon known as mugham-jazz. Thanks to his gift, mugham has a new life in the world musical culture. His brilliant compositions are now performed all over the world. And all his work - this is indeed the transcript of his feelings in relation to his difficult life, in relation to the world, which, alas, did not immediately realize that a person who was ahead of time came to life, a man who can see and hear the world differently than it is done by others.

The walls of the museum are full of statements of professionals about Vagif and his works:

"Mustafazadeh is a top-class pianist. It is difficult to find anyone equal to him in jazz. He is the most lyrical pianist I have ever listened to." (V. Conover, American musician and critic).

"His music is amazingly modern and at the same time it is full of the mysteries of ancient Caucasian melodies sung by poets of many generations. It is a fairy tale told by Scheherazade on the 1002^nd night" (B. Johansson, Swedish jazz pianist).

"Vagif Mustafazadeh is one of the best pianists in the world" (D. Becker, president of the Washington Jazz Club).

Apart from being an author of many jazz compositions and arrangements, Vagif also wrote symphonic and chamber music. He is a laureate of jazz festivals Tallinn-66, Tallinn-67, Baku Jazz-69, All-Union Jazz Festival in Donetsk (Ukraine, 1977), jazz festival Tbilisi-78, which brought him the title of the best pianist. In 1979, at the International Jazz Competition in Monaco, he was awarded the first prize and a white grand piano.

M. Tsvetaeva: "I do not listen to music. I listen to my soul!"

This is an absolute truth. When you are left alone with Vagif’s music, immersed in it, forgetting about reality, you are taken to a different dimension, where there is no time, no problems, no illnesses. But there is freedom, will and love. His music creates harmony, which you fall into unexpectedly to discover happiness...

"Long live, Vagif!"

Long live means be: yesterday, today, tomorrow and always. But be here! In music, photos, letters, memories, and love of those with whom he was personally acquainted, and those with whom he was not familiar, but who knew his music. Here, in the museum, he looks at us from portraits created by Nikas Safronov, Asaf Jafarov, the late Asim Guliyev. Here is a sculpture created by Azad Zeynalov. He and his music. Music and space. Great. Immeasurable as his soul, which continues to live in his music. And the music lives in us, making that boy from the Old City immortal. In March, the great maestro who has shaken this world with his music would turn 78 years old.