MELODY OF THE SOUL

"The mugam is food for the soul. The mugam is the essence of life which you can neither see nor touch. It is a strange feeling of intoxication, a transfer to quite a different world. The mugam is a part of what you are, and we must preserve it if we are to preserve ourselves as a nation." This is how Alim Qasimov, the celebrated Azerbaijani khanende, described this amazing and unique genre of Azerbaijani music to a French journalist…It is this unblinking devotion and the love of the people for these priceless monuments of Azerbaijan's material-spiritual culture and the magnificent achievements of music and poetry that is the nutrition which enables the mugams to live and continue to live for centuries to come.

Like blood, the mugam flows through the soul of the Azerbaijani people, and an understanding of and love for it undoubtedly find a place, perhaps not straightaway, in the hearts of each representative of our nation. Today the mugam is a phenomenon that has travelled far beyond the bounds of Azerbaijan and has won millions of admirers all over the world.

Having raised the def (a traditional tambourine - ed.) to his ear, Mutallim Damirov starts to sing. As soon as his voice changes to a long vibrating chant, bordering on a lamentation, the singer closes his eyes and seems to lose himself in a sea of ancient poetry. That is how people have sung in Azerbaijan for centuries. The mugam is music from the first person, created before our eyes. The personality of the musician filters through his gesticulations, his music and his figurative transmogrification. There is a dash of the theatre about the mugam, and always there is a dialogue. But you must be able to know how to listen to it. "The mugam is a gift from God. When I sing the mugam I forget about myself. I am out of control because the mugam is taking its own course," the khanende Damirov says.

Behind him two musicians are improvising on the tar and the kamanca. They are playing the mugam, an ancient unique form of Azerbaijani music. "Situated on the crossroads of Europe and Asia and one of the central points of the legendary Silk Road, Azerbaijan brought together Arabic, Persian and Turkish influences to create the mugam, an improvised style of singing and playing music." This is a quote from an essay by the French journalist Michael Menville, published by the France Presse agency.

Mugams have long since captured the minds of foreign audiences, shaping among them a special opinion about Azerbaijan's cultural-spiritual wealth. After all, the multifaceted, graphic and emotionally intonated structure and the deep pithiness and spiritual orientation of the mugams are closely inter-linked with the perception of life and world outlook of the people who created them. The sophistication of the melodic and rhythmical embellishments of the mugams reminds one of the rich patterns of Azerbaijani carpets, the flowery ornamentation of the mosques, ethnic jewellery copied down to the last detail and the metaphorical deposit in eastern poetry.

There is also no doubt that for the Azerbaijani people the mugam is more than art, it is a "monumental temple of music". This is, first and foremost, a national concept, illustrated by the fact that for centuries the secrets of the art of the mugam have been handed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. Undoubtedly, with the course of time, the mugams, in relation to the general changes in the spiritual culture of the people, have become transformed, modified, but at the same time have preserved their true purport. Herein lies another peculiarity of the mugam: it is a genre that is for ever developing and renovating itself through the due processes of life.

The mugam is frequently blended with other forms and genres of music. It could be said that the first experience in this direction was made by Uzeyir Hacibayov, who blended the mugam with classical music in the first opera in the east, "Leyli and Mejnun". Generally speaking, it could be said that the mugam affected all genres of Azerbaijani music. All this paved the way to the symphonic mugams of Fikrat Amirov and Niyazi and the symphonism of Qara Qarayev, and in the 20th century we were to observe these successes. If we look at history today we can see for ourselves that there is no genre in Azerbaijani music in which the influence of the mugam has not been felt. The ballet, opera, popular music, song, jazz - in all these we can feel a synthesis with the mugam and its influence.

In the 1960s and 1970s the celebrated Azerbaijani jazz musician Vaqif Mustafazada presented improvised versions of a blend of the mugam and jazz, which to this day have been broadly accepted throughout the world. There are now many such examples where the mugam has been synthesized with African melodies, Norwegian folk songs, Spanish tunes…There are those who oppose these experiments who believe that the mugam should be preserved in its primeval beauty, and perhaps they are right in many ways. However, if such syntheses really do become works of art and if they help new people to join the army of devotees of the mugam, then, perhaps, such experiments are permissible and even necessary.

In any event, the basic mugam, the mugam as we know it, will live on and be handed down from generation to generation, from the old master to his pupils, as has been the case for hundreds of years. Still, it is gratifying to know that today the mugam is under the patronage of UNESCO which, in 2003, included it in its world non-material cultural heritage list. Moreover, a huge contribution to the preservation and popularization of the mugam in the world is being made by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, the Foundation of Friends of Azerbaijani Culture and, in particular, Azerbaijan's First Lady, Mehriban Aliyeva. It is thanks to her support that the International Mugam Centre was opened in Baku, two international mugam festivals and competitions among young performers have been organized, the music album "Karabakh khanendes" has been issued, the "Mugam" magazine has been published, a scientific symposium has been organized, and so on. The Encyclopaedia of the Mugam occupies a special place in this.

Today the Azerbaijani mugam is setting the whole world aquiver. The mugam is uniting and bringing together millions of people. As Mehriban Aliyeva said, the mugam is a symbol of love and beauty and it will never lose its relevance.