"JAZZ - A WAY OF LIFE"

Salman Qambarov is a creative personality who extends the bounds of the customary framework. His style of jazz is incredibly colourful, emotional and is hard to forget. He himself does not like it when he is called a jazz player, because he believes that this concept has become too devolved. "I'm a musician!" Salman Qambarov explains. Regionplus talks to the musician, composer and artistic director of the Rasid Behbudov Song Theatre, Salman Qambarov, about the force of jazz, about music and good taste.

- Your grand-father Huseynaga Hacibababayov was a well-known opera performer. You have followed in his footsteps and also chosen music. Did you dream of becoming a musician when you were a child?

-I always liked music. When I was still very small, I liked to touch the keys of our grand piano at home. Naturally, when my mother noticed my penchant for music, she enrolled me in the Bulbul special secondary school, When I finished school there, I went to the State Conservatory, from which I graduated in music theory, musicology and as a composer. I studied in the class of Ismayil Hacibayov. My first work, "Variations for the piano" was awarded the first prize at the All-Union Composers' Contest in Moscow in 1987.

As far as my grandfather is concerned, opera singers and film actors were the pop idols of that time, who were "sought out" by the fans and whose photographs hung on the walls in many flats. I have seen documentary footage of the Azerbaijani delegation being welcomed at Baku railway station dated 1938.

My grandfather, Huseynaga Hacibababayov, was among the singers returning from the first ten-day festival of art and culture, which had been held in Moscow. They alighted from the train, wearing mackintoshes and sumptuous hats, and people immediately clustered round them with bouquets of flowers. The numbers of people wishing to catch sight of their idols were plainly so many that the whole platform was packed with them. People left everything they were doing and went to the station of their own free will. At that time art was regarded as something elevated and profound.

- What made you turn to jazz?

-I started listening to jazz from the age of fourteen. Before that, I had heard what was broadcast on Soviet television - the songs of Muslim Magomayev, Maya Kritslinskaya, and Valeriy Obodzinskiy. The songs and the performers were splendid! Incidentally, the songs of Soviet composers could become a splendid basis for jazz compositions for they were very melodic and soulful. They were not like what we hear today from the television screens - songs that consist of "two stamps of the feet and three claps of the hands" with simple words and monotonous tunes. There is no way that you could turn today's pop songs into jazz.

- Why do you think that modern pop music has become so primitive?

- Because most of the people promoting it - the musicians, singers, composers - don't even think about what they're doing. They do not have time to get properly educated for their profession, they don't have time to study music. All the shortcomings are the result of lack of education and constantly being in a hurry. Today you can play a musical instrument by ear without being able to read music or really understand musical genres. But you can't go far by just relying on talent alone.

-You need to know the theory without which practice is impossible. Everyone is in a hurry to get somewhere, they want to have everything right away, they dream of earning big money. Most of the musicians play and sing the songs for which they can be well paid at weddings. And what kind of music do people usually order at our weddings. Yes, that's right, "two stamps and three claps". It is not worth indulging in tasteless music. We need to educate our listeners and inculcate in them good taste in music through our own creative works. I note that we do have splendid composers who write fairly good songs such as Emin Karimi, Vaqif Garayzada, and Aytan Ismixanova. They turn out very "tasteful" hits…

- What kind of music do you listen to in your spare time, other than jazz"?

- Various types. The main thing is that it should be good quality music. I'm even afraid to really like any of the Russian performers. As soon as I start to like one of them he either dies or vanishes from the stage. In his time, I used to like to listen to Igor Talkov. He got killed. I really liked Viktor Reznikov. He was involved in a road accident. I used to like to listen to Andrey Misin, but he disappeared somewhere. These people played good-quality music, which touched the heart and which you remembered all your life. But today's pop music is a one- day wonder. Alas, modern pop music is the frivolous songs of Ukupnik and Drobysh. And these people manage to get onto juries and evaluate young talent at different contests. It is all very sad.

- What does jazz mean to you?

- Jazz is world-wide culture. It represents freedom, emotions, character. It is a way of life. Much of it is based on improvisation, there is much experimentation on the music, the styles and the mixing of styles. The main thing is the freedom of ideas, the freedom of sound. Improvisation is something that is born on the stage. I don't like it when people call me a jazz player. I am a musician. Alas, in Azerbaijan the concept of "jazz player" has been considerably devolved.

This has happened because the representatives of so-called pop music, who have compromised themselves by their various deeds which have nothing to do with music, have decided to go over to playing jazz, in order to appear serious and weighty. The same thing is happening to mugam [Azerbaijani folk music]. Those who play folk instruments insufficiently well are trying to go over to "jazz" (as it seems to them), which desperately does not wish to take them in.

-  How can we teach the up-and-coming generation to appreciate quality music? How can young people learn to "fall in love" with jazz?

- At the moment, people are living in a time when music can be heard almost everywhere. This is made possible by radio, television and also the easily accessible musical materials like discs and video recordings. At the same time, music is being undervalued because it is so easily accessible. It is turning into a barely perceived noise.

People are simply becoming unaccustomed to listening to music seriously. Jazz can also vary greatly. The same is true of films. For example, there are the films of George Danieli, Federico Fellini and Pedro Almodovar - everyone choses what he wants to see for himself. In jazz music there are also numerous trends and styles: classical jazz, modal jazz, avant-garde jazz, rock jazz, cool and even pop jazz, as well as others. If a teenager listened to the group "Shakatak" when he was 13 years old, for example, and he liked it, then in the future he will possibly listen to classical jazz, so it shouldn't be too long before he's listening to Herbie Hancock.

You know, to love music means to feel a need to commune with it, to experience it, to feel joy, emotion, sorrow, when listening to it. To understand music means to be fully aware that you are perceiving it, to take into account its content and to a certain extent its form. It takes years to understand it properly. Listening to serious music is hard work.

- Who listens to your music?

- There are very few people versed in the humanities among our listeners. It is mostly the "technically-minded people" - IT operatives, chemists, biologists, doctors and physicists - who listen to jazz. May be this is because their type of activity has accustomed them to analyse and think about things? Sadly, I have never met a plumber in real life who likes to listen to jazz numbers like "Gosha, he is Goga" from the film "Moscow does not believe in tears".

If the arrangement of a concert allows me to decide for myself what to play, I start off by playing the first composition to test the water; I play something which requires a medium level of perception, and I observe the reaction of the audience. If I feel that they accept the music and understand it, then I go on to play what I like. Like any musician, I want my music to be listened to and accepted.

- What do you think about mugham jazz? Today many young musicians like to play this mixed type of music…

- I call this music ethno-jazz, like the majority of experts do. There is the so-called modal jazz, when the musician uses Azerbaijani folk music, mugham, in the manner of this trend. You know, it's like cooking. Saucepans are used in all countries, but what is cooked in them depends on the selection of ingredients and the flavourings used. There are "masses" of aromatic flavourings and spices, which there is no need to overdo. Otherwise the dish becomes inedible.

Incidentally, people here mistakenly think that the only way to promote Azerbaijan is through its folk music. I don't agree with that. Let's imagine that a musical group came to Baku from Burkina Faso and performed music for us on drums or tambourines. For us that would be something exotic, something quite new, which only evokes curiosity and nothing else… But what happens when the same group unexpectedly gives a virtuoso performance of Rakhmaninov or Bach? That would be something really first class! The audience would long remember such musicians and the country they came from.

Believe me, you can amaze people and evoke a storm of emotions by playing French works by Debussy or Poulenc, in France, works by Wagner or Schubert in Germany and works by Verdi or Vivaldi in Italy. The main thing is to do this in a professional manner and with a high standard. In her time, this is what Farida Mammadova did, when she performed works by  Schubert, Brahms and Maler at the Beethoven Festival in Bonn. I think we need to promote our country first and foremost through our professionalism.

-Tell us about your plans for the future, about new projects. You probably go on working, even in the summer…

I am the artistic director at the Rasid Behbudov Song Theatre. We recently began to set up a variety symphony orchestra. We have already got musicians together, are working on a repertoire and by the end of the year you will be able to listen to a new programme performed by them. As far as my personal work plans are concerned, I'm going to go to Istanbul in July for the international jazz festival and after that to Germany, Georgia and Austria.

At the beginning of 2015 a new album is to be released in Europe, the result of our collaboration with the Kurdish singer Aynur Dogan, the Iranian Ayhan Kalhor who lives in the USA and the Turk from Germany, Cemil Qocgiri. This is a very interesting international project with a mixture of eastern and western music. At the present time, I am also working on a new project together with the director of the Puppet Theatre, Tarlan Gorcu, We are preparing to stage Uzeyir Hacibayov's "Leyla and Majnun". As you can see, a sufficiently broad range of  different styles are embraced, and I am helped in this by the education I received, not abroad, but here in my own country.