“Which artists have made the greatest impact on your life?”

By Arif Feyziyev

I can list a number of talented people born in Azerbaijan and have made great impact into the development of our society. Vaqif Mustafazadeh, is one of my favourite artists, who had a valuable contribution to Azerbaijani music. He was an Azerbaijani Jazz pianist and composer, acclaimed for fusing jazz and the traditional Azerbaijani folk music known as Mugham. When I started to write this article about him, decided to visit his home-museum located in the Icheri Sheher, The Old City. There I read lots of memories and articles about him, one of them I loved dearly – according to many world famous jazz musicians; Mustafazadeh is one of the pioneers and “the architect of jazz in Azerbaijan”. I totally agree with this quotation, as he was a true innovator and great musician who has a special place in the history of Azerbaijani jazz music.

Musical prohibitions during the 1940s and 1950s meant that the playing of jazz was banned in the USSR, including Azerbaijan. Since there was no opportunity to get jazz records from anywhere, Mustafazadeh listened to few jazz pieces, having to learn from movies where he heard jazz music and BBC radio – he also sang ‘Meykhana’ , a type of rhythmic poetry, which had also been banned. After listening on the radio, he and his friend Vagif Samadoglu attempted to recreate the music on the piano.

From the 1960s, prohibitions put on jazz music were gradually lifted and thus the late 1960s and 70s became a time when Baku was a real centre of locally inspired jazz. By this time, Mustafazadeh was making his way to his audience and his popularity grew. His name was often mentioned among other jazz musicians and he participated in festivals held in his native land, as well as in and outside the Soviet countries. Since making a strong impression in his early years at college, his music progressed and popularity grew; he appeared in many festivals.

Mustafazadeh is the founder of the Azerbaijani jazz mugham movement that emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s in Baku, as a result of the mixture of these two styles. He began searching for new ways to structure his improvisations by exploring modal music. More innovative approaches were taken by him and its influence stretched into later developments of this style. Moreover, Vagif Mustafazadeh founded the “Sevil” Vocal Group, which improved the involvement of women singers to jazz music.

Mustafazadeh died of a heart attack shortly after a concert in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Unfortunately, his life was short, but the music that he composed still well-known not only in Azerbaijan, but also in worldwide. One of his composition, that I love very much and cannot stop myself to listen to every day is “Thoughts”, “Baku nights” and “Fantasy”, I wish everybody can listen his music and understand the beauty of Azerbaijani music.

If you had a chance to visit Azerbaijan, I definitely, recommend you to visit Vagif Mustafazadeh home-museum in Icheri Sheher, the small and cozy apartment full of music memories.

More about Arif:

Arif Feyziyev is a first year of master student at Azerbaijan state university of economics, in Baku. He plans to build his career on marketing field, but he is also actively involved in sport activities. While he was a student gained very rich social and volunteering background on education and sport field. One of his hobby is to discover different culture, therefore he likes traveling. You can get more information about him on Facebook: @ Arif Feyziyev

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