The stage is just a couple of large dining tables covered with white cotton sheets pushed together at one end of the room. The “commandant,” played by a young woman, has an elfin face and shy smile behind oversized dark glasses.
Like any kind of improvisation, meykhana, a musical style akin to rap, has its detractors and its devotees in Azerbaijan. Literally translated as “the place of wine,” meykhana is the poetry of the country’s poorer neighborhoods, occasionally performed at weddings, capable of inducing a chuckle and a raised eyebrow.
In Armenia, it is routine for the annual Eurovision contest to provoke heated debate about the relative merits of the performers. But this year, post-contest discussion in Yerevan is also laden with political and diplomatic significance.
To many in Azerbaijan, winning Europe's ultimate pop-music contest produced a surge of national pride. But as the cheering over the Eurovision victory subsides, a tricky debate is just starting to unfold: what image of itself should Azerbaijan project to the outside world next year?
That screeching sound coming from Georgia isn’t feedback from a guitar amp. It is, apparently, the sound of the brakes being applied to an MTV-sponsored blockbuster rock festival.
A collection of ancient gold, silver and bronze artifacts has become the focus of a rare public dispute between the self-declared Nagorno Karabakh Republic and its patron, Armenia, which is appraising the treasure trove. By right, de facto Karabakh officials say, the items belong to Karabakh. But, so far, the History Museum of Armenia shows no sign of giving them back.
Armenia’s civil rights record isn’t exactly unblemished, but to thousands of Iranians eager to hear pop singers banned in Iran, the conservative South Caucasus country still ranks as a land of liberty.
Rock ‘n Roll didn’t play a significant role in bringing down the Communist system, but it did help shape the economic elites in post-Soviet states, a Western researcher argues.
Its spare Soviet-era grounds lack the gothic spires of Britain’s Eton College or the Romanesque facades of the great Paris lycées. But the graduates of Fizmat, a math and physics academy in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital, probably wield more influence in their native land than do graduates from any single elite school in the West in their respective countries.
The plot is thickening in the case of a European Union-based documentary crew that was barred from filming in Armenia. Authorities in Yerevan believe the documentary’s executive producer is on “friendly terms with Azerbaijani officials,” and wants to create a program on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from a pro-Baku viewpoint. The producer, Andrius Brokas, is vehemently denying the allegation.
