When it comes to Azerbaijan and music, Eurovision – and, now, Jennifer Lopez – have largely hogged the outside world’s attention. But practitioners of mugam, an ancient Azerbaijani form of musical poetry set to percussion and strings, feel no sense of threat. Western pop music and mugam – the one about glamour, the other about ghazals – can peacefully coexist, they say.
With nine months to go before Baku hosts the Eurovision pop-music competition, transparency concerns are arising about Azerbaijani government expenditures on the event.
It’s Thursday night at the Soviet-era House of Culture in Agudzera, a village outside Sukhumi, the capital of the breakaway region of Abkhazia, and three Abkhaz rock bands are setting up for a concert. The lighting and sound system is professional and right out of the box, but guitarist Alexander Tsamruk of the band Ferumage must adjust the levels because there is no soundman.
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.
