Azerbaijani Gas Station Video: "This Gasoline Will Set You on Fire"

It's not often that a gas station ditty sets your feet a-tappin', but the Azerbaijani filling station chain Azpetrol has given it a try with a rap-style beat that promises viewers that "This gasoline will set you on fire."

Posted with an English-language translation on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the song, which features Azerbaijani pop artist Aygun Kazimova and rapper Miri Yusif, is a no-holds-barred paean to petrol. Gasoline, we're told, "will help you when you're in trouble," "make the long roads shorter," and "our cold days warmer."

"Oh, petrol, give power to my engine/My country's growing faster," Kazimova and Yusif sing.

RFE/RL posits that the video may contain some double meanings. But don't look for a connection with climate change in the line about gasoline warming up "our cold days." Nor do "the legions of faceless, helmeted motorcycle riders" particularly evoke Azerbaijan's riot police, who have little difficulty making their presence known on foot.

This is about gasoline -- and national pride. Period. Hydrocarbons put Azerbaijan on the post-Soviet map, turned Baku into a cocky capital city, and, yes, helped make the "cold days" of the chaotic early 1990s into a memory. No Azerbaijani energy company is likely to let you forget it.


*Giorgi Lomsadze is on vacation. Elizabeth Owen is EurasiaNet.org's Caucasus news editor in Tbilisi.