THERE'S NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE

The composer Cahangir Zulfuqarov believes that, if a child is constantly exposed to good songs and music right from his early years, he or she will develop a sense of good taste; when that child is going through their most difficult age, the teenage years, and hears tawdry pop music, he will not particularly be affected by it because he can easily distinguish the really good music from a poor imitation of music. Zulfuqarov has composed music for performances of Alexander Ostrovsky's "Snow Maiden", Bertolt Brecht's "Mother Courage and her Children", Alexander Pushkin's "The Golden Cockerel", Charles Perrault's "Little Red Riding Hood", Gianni Rodari's "Cipollino", Mirza Fatali Axundov's  "Destroyers of Paris" and many other shows. He has also written the music for cartoon, documentary and feature films and numerous songs and romances. In an interview with Regionplus Merited Artiste Cahangir Zulfuqarov, the artistic director of the State Children's Philharmonic, the musical director of the Azerbaijan State Puppet Theatre, talked about his own musical predilections, children's songs and his early acting experience and many other things.

- You recently acted in a crime series. Did you decide to try your hand at being an actor?

- The director Xanlar Agayev offered me a part in the new serial "In the name of the Law", which is soon to be shown on one of the local TV channels. The serial is set in Baku in the mid-1950s. All the plots in the film are incidentally true stories derived from the archives of the Baku prosecutor's office. I was entrusted with the part of an imposing Jewish man, the manager of a shop selling antique jewellery, who was doing his job meticulously. One day a beautiful young lady enters my shop, who is played by Aygun Rahimova and starts to flirt with me. Naturally, I cannot resist her charms and agree to employ her straightaway. Then I invite the young woman out to a restaurant. While we are dancing, Almaz, as her character is called, manages to sneak the jewellery shop key out of my pocket without my noticing it and hands it to her accomplice. While I am enjoying myself in the restaurant with Almaz, the accomplice cleans out the shop, stealing items of jewellery worth 40,000 roubles, an incredible sum at that time. The Jewish manager is prosecuted and he is destined to go to prison. You will find out how this crime story ends when you watch the episode. I'm not going to give away the ending…

- Did you like working in film?

- Yes, I did. Even when I was a child I dreamt of writing music for films and even of play a bit part. Both my dreams have come true. I have worked with many Azeri directors and written music for their films. Over the last ten years I have also been writing music for shows. I have been the musical director at Azerbaijan's Abdulla Saiq State Puppet Theatre for more than 30 years. I compose music for children just as my father, Oqtay Zulfuqarov, did. I have written the music for more than 35 shows over this period. Before I started working in the theatre I was the music producer for the Azerbaijan State Radio and Television Company.

- You were born into the family of Oqtay Zulfuqarov, a well-known composer of music for children, so you must have been surrounded by music from early childhood. You must surely have dreamt of becoming a spaceship pilot or a footballer when you were a child?

- I never really thought about it. I knew that I would be a musician even when I was a very small child. And that was my choice. I have always loved music. Musicians who were friends of my father often came to visit us, and I used to listen to how inspired they were when they talked about music. Even when I was very little, I imagined that I would be a musician like my Dad. When I reached the age of seven, my parents enrolled me in a music school. I was neither a rolling stone nor a dreamer. I recall that, when I took my music exam in the tenth class, I played a fugue by [the German composer Johann Sebastian] Bach, adding to it 16 bars of my own. All the teachers were so shocked. But I thought, why are they so perplexed? I'm simply improvising…" My father learned about this a few days later and, strange as it may seem, he didn't give me any kind of dressing down this time about the rights and wrongs of doing such a thing. It turned out that my Mum had confided to him that I had composed music without telling him. I set myself the task of writing a piano concerto. My Dad asked me to show him the work. Soon afterwards he said, "I think you will make a composer." This is exactly what happened. But I feel quite sure that, if hadn't had an ear for music and been talented, my father would never have allowed me to take up music.

We had to break off our interview for a few minutes. Dzhahangir Zulfugarov had to listen to two seven-year-old schoolgirls, who wanted to join the Children's Philharmonic. The composer sat down at the grand piano and played a tune. He asked the little girls to try and sing the tune back to him. After spending 15 minutes with the little girls, Cahangir muallim let the parents of the future little musicians know his verdict: "Everything's excellent. We look forward to seeing you at the lessons!"

- Is it easier to work with children than with adults?

- Of course, it is. They are untainted and na?ve, they don't know how to lie. They are eager to learn something new. They are not afraid of learning something new, and almost all of them are musical. I'm glad that I have managed to find a common language with them. I learnt that from my father.

- What other music besides classical did you listen to in your youth?

- In those days culture was under siege. We had no idea what was going on in the West. Western records were smuggled into Baku and recorded over and over again "on spools" and passed around. At that time, we boys could not possibly get hold of  "Rolling Stones'" and  "Beatles'" records. When the great [Azeri composer] Qara Qarayev [Gara Garayev] went to the USA, he made a recording for himself of the US rock opera "Jesus Christ Superstar", which was very popular at that time. In Baku my Dad made a recording of it for himself, but he absolutely forbade us to touch the "spool". Once, when my father was away on a business trip, I invited my classmates round to listen to the rock-musical. My Mum, who was an extremely kind person, provided us with a whole heap of sandwiches and some extremely delicious tea. We listened to "Deep Purple" vocalist Ian Gillan singing, holding our breath and dreaming of recording something similar.

- Do you like today's music? What can we do, in your opinion, to improve the musical taste of today's young people?

- That is not all that easy to do. Broadcasting is a frightful, strong weapon. If a person has the money, they can become a star overnight. It doesn't matter whether you have a good ear for music or any talent. This is not so important. If your songs and video clips are played on the radio and TV channels for days on end, you will become well known. But for how long? New people will come along and take your place on the air and you will very soon be forgotten. What is more, the human ear is such that it very quickly gets used to the music it hears, so that this music becomes ingrained and familiar. The problem today is the lack of musical taste. Nowadays people are living in a time when they can hear music almost everywhere, owing to the radio and TV and the easily accessible  music clips on the Internet. At the same time, the ease of accessing music is undermining its value. It is becoming just a noise that we hardly notice. People are no longer used to properly concentrating on listening to music. I believe that only really good music should be broadcast, so that listeners learn to have good tastes in music.

I'll tell you one story from my own experience. A young man came to see me who said that he had written a song. He asked me to help him to take down the notes. It turned out that this "composer" could not read music at all. "How did you manage to write the music down?" I asked him. "I recorded my song on a Dictaphone," he replied. This is how at least half of the songs are written today. Complete chaos reigns in the music industry. Everything has been taken over by the wedding business. It's even reached television. And it's hard to stop it… I remember that Covdat Haciyev, my lecturer at the conservatoire,  often used to say that our hearing ability was like a tape recorder, remembering and "recording" in its memory all the music that we hear throughout our lives. High quality music may be beneficial to the human organism, but poor quality music only poisons our brain. This is why we need to listen to good, top quality music.

- It would be interesting to know which of today's performers you listen to in your leisure time.

- I really like the splendid performance of Azar Zeynalov. Aygyun Beyler is an amazing singer. Eyyub Yaqubov sings chansons with real feeling. Lala Mammadova has a voice with a velvety timbre. Ilqar Muradov is a splendid singer and person. I think that Brilliant Dadaseva is one of our best singers.

- Who in your family has followed in your father's footsteps?

- My daughter Amina. She plays the flute in the State Symphony Orchestra. Her husband is the pianist Emil Afrasiyab. My grandson Afrasiyab, who is two and half, loves to play about on the grand piano, so I hope that he will also become a musician. Thus, it turns out that we are all musicians in our family. My wife teaches at Music School No. 20; my sister-in-law, Haqiqat Maharramova, who  is a pianist, is a professor at the Baku Academy of Music. All our jobs involve music and contact with children…

- Cahangir muallim [mode of address], what's is happening in the Children's Philharmonic at the Puppet Theatre, of which you are the director? What new things are you preparing for your little spectators? 

- Work is in full swing in the Children's Philharmonic at Azerbaijan's State Puppet Theatre. At the present time, we are rehearsing for three shows: "The Small Round Loaf" ["The Gingerbread Man" ], "Malik Mammad" and "Cipollino". We have decided to entrust the staging of "The Small Round Loaf" to the talented Russian puppeteer Eduard Gayday. I'm writing the music for all three shows. More than 300 children play in our philharmonic. We have many dance classes, our own symphony orchestra, an orchestra of folk instruments, a musical theatre, a children's choir, and the "ABVGDeika group of scene painters. Children in Azerbaijan love to hear our Children's Philharmonic play.