A SELF-MADE MAN

He was the son neither of beys [social title; the rich] nor of Baku or Susa [Shusha, town in Karabakh] intelligentsia; there were neither singers nor composers in his family. People like him are called self-made men in the West (a person who has made themselves by themselves).

"Khan Sarabski"

Huseynqulu Sarabski was born into the family of a poor sailor, Malik Rzayev, in the suburbs of Baku on 20 March 1879. His father, who had never received any education himself, put him in a religious school. The future singer, composer, actor and playwright was left with extremely distressing memories of this school. They were taught very little and forced to cram the Koran. Disobedient pupils were compelled to do as they were told by beating them. When he reached the age of 12, he ran away from the school. The boy took on the hardest of jobs in order to earn his bread and butter. He worked as a stone mason and a blacksmith's assistant. "Even at that time, he dreamt of studying and was drawn to studies. When I was going to work, I used to look enviously at the pupils on their way to school," Sarabski recalled. 

  But he did manage to find free time to teach himself. He studied Russian by being friends with a boy who was studying at a Russian school and later on he himself started to go there since it was sponsored by the patron of the arts, [oil magnate] Zeynalabdin Tagiyev and had been set up specially for the poor. It was the theatre that determined his future life. This happened in 1896 when Azerbaijani theatre had just come into being. There was only one amateur troupe operating in Baku at that time, which had been set up by students 

The 16-year-old Sarabski managed to get a part in the production of Mirza Fatali Axundov's "Vazir of the Lankaran Khanate". At that time, the youth did not know anything about the theatre at all. He later recalled that time in the following manner: "When the lights went down, I got frightened. The curtain began to go up, and I nearly ran away because I was so scared: I thought that a wall was falling down. When they looked at me, the audience really did laugh out loud."

Sarabski was not disappointed by that evening. Not at all, he felt a wave of spiritual strength surging within him as if he had been touched by real magic. This is why he chose the stage name of "Khan Sarabski" in honour of Axundov's production. All the young man's thoughts and strivings were focussed on a single goal, that of becoming an artiste. Sarabski became friends with the actors and kept on begging them to introduce him to Huseyn Arablinski, the director and leading actor in the theatre.

He did not waste his time just being purposeful. He started to look for ways of becoming a better qualified worker and earning more money. He went to evening classes at a vocational school and, once he had completed the course, he found a simpler and better-paid job. Finally, he enrolled on acting courses. "The commission that invigilated at the exam consisted of Hasan-bay Malikov (well-known by the stage name of Zardabi, one of the founders of  Azerbaijani theatre) and the playwright Nacaf-bay Vazirov… I recited [Russian poet Alexander] Pushkin's poem 'Autumn' well, so Hasan-bay and Nacaf-bay took notice of me. The sincerity and great strength of feeling with which I recited the poem touched them," Sarabski recalls his first meeting with these famous theatrical figures; this was the meeting that gave him the "green light" on his path into the world of the theatre.

This was already back in 1899. A year later the courses closed down owing to a lack of financing. In actual fact they had only kept running because the enthusiasm of their founders, Zardabi and Vazirov. Sarabski did not get down-hearted, but he still did not have enough experience. For this reason Vazirov took him into his troupe as a costumier, so that he would get some kind of experience. And then, in 1902 Sarabski made his first appearance on the stage. The troupe was headed by the well-known writer and teacher Nariman Narimanov (at that time he had not yet become a political figure). In his first appearance on the stage Sarabski played Rasul in Narimanov's play "A tongue can be dangerous". This debut was the deciding factor in his future.

Sarabski had neither wealthy relatives nor influential friends. And so he continued struggle on in poverty. The fact is that actors could not earn enough to live on in the theatre. They were largely students, i.e. the children of those who could afford to pay for their tuition. Sarabski had no support like that. He was forced to work as a stopcock operator in one of the city's water booths and while he was controlling the water supply, he would be learning his words for a part.

Actor, singer, teacher

Sarabski gave almost 20 years of his life to the Azerbaijan theatre. The characters he portrayed on the stage were extremely popular: Haci Salah ("The Vazir of  the Lankaran Khanate"), Dervish Mastali-shah ("Mosyo Zhordan"), as well as other characters from Axundov's works such as Zohok and Farhad ("Gave the Blacksmith") of Sama, Nacaf-bay ("The Bankrupt Family"), Farhad ("The Unfortunate Youth"), Qurban ("Pari Cadu") and others. All in all, Sarabski played more than 40 parts in plays by Azerbaijani playwrights. But he also acted in plays by Russian and Western European classical writers.  Sarabski played Karl Moor in [German writer Friedrich] Schiller's "The Robbers" [German, "Die Rauber"], Jago in [the English writer] Shakespeare's "Othello", "Jeannnetali in [French writer] Moliere's "The Flying Doctor"[French, "Le Medecin Volant"]" , the postmaster and Lyapkin-Tyapkin in [Russian writer Nikolay] Gogol's "The Government Inspector" [Russ. "Revizor"] and Almansor in [German writer Heinrich] Heine's play of the same name.

 Sarabski made his first appearance as a singer in 1908, when he became the soloist in the "Nicat" amateur opera troupe. In that same year, incidentally he sang Macnun's aria in the first Azerbaijani opera "Leyli and Macnun" by Uzeyir Hacibayov, becoming an unsurpassed performer of that role. He went on to sing that part more than 400 times, right up until 1941.

The singer played a very important part in the development of Azerbaijani opera. The national opera had only just been set up at the beginning of the century and the necessary experience had not been accumulated, nor were there any singing coaches. Much had to be done intuitively, literally relying on "instinct". Sarabski was in fact one of the founders of the local opera school. This is why he had to work in several different directions simultaneously. He sang both in the opera and in musical comedies. "We didn't even dream of opera at that time, although many people had good voices and knew how to sing," the actor and singer recalls. He himself had sung a lot from childhood and had known many folk songs and mugams [folk music compositions]. While he was still a youth, he sang to the workers. "While working the stones, I used to sing sikasta [Azerbaijani folk songs]," Sarabski said. "My workmates used to tell me: "Huseynqulu, we'll work your stones, so you can sit down and sing to us."

He was a person with numerous talents. Even before the revolution, he had written three plays: "Ignorance", "He who seeks shall find" and "You shall reap what you sow". He had also written several songs. He was the author of topical articles on music. The first one entitled "Old Baku" he wrote back in the 1930s, providing not only historical and ethnographic details of the city but also a description of the wealth of musical traditions there. Last year the "Science and Education" publishing house put out the book "You are a Gillyflower and a Buta", which contains the collected articles of Sarabski devoted the oral folk tradition of Azerbaijan

In 1940 he was also teaching opera and mugams at the State Conservatoire of Azerbaijan. His pupils included such well-known female singers as Sovkat Alakbarova and Sara Qadimova. Although Sarabski did not come from a family of the intelligentsia, he did not learn French from the age of four, he did not have nannies nor did he go to primary school, he was a self-made man and laid the foundation of the Azerbaijani opera and helped to bring up a whole pleiad of artistes. His great-grandson, the outstanding pianist Isfar Sarabski, is worthily representing Azerbaijan at jazz venues throughout the world.