Jazz in Azerbaijan

In the chaos that followed the Russian Revolution, Azerbaijan, which was part of the Soviet Union from 1920, jazz was slower to arrive than it was in Europe. There were certainly bands performing by the late 1920s – ads for The Eastern Jazz Band and photos of various dance bands performing in the capital, Baku, exist, though no recordings from the period appear to survive.

Under Stalin, jazz was at times tolerated, but more often looked down upon. In Azerbaijan, performances of jazz seem mostly have been initiated by open-minded figures from the classical music world, like the composers Gara Garayev, Niyazi, Tofig Guliyev and Rauf Hajiyev. Hajiyev was director of ‘State Jazz’ from the 1950s, and was instrumental in the formation of the vocal group Gaya Quartet, whose music was an eccentric blend of 1960s pop, jazz and Four Freshman-style harmonies, with Russian jazz pianist/arranger, Anatoliy Kalvarskiy, working as their musical director.

Two very fine pianists began to make their mark in the 1960s. Rafig Babayev achieved success from the into the 1980s for both for his jazz trio and quartet work and for his film scores. His music was mostly in the American tradition, with the influence of Bill Evans often showing through. Babayev also collaborated with Gaya Quartet. Vagif Mustafa-Zadeh (pictured) released a similarly Evans-sounding trio album Morning in 1966, but by the 1970s he had succeeded in fusing jazz and mugham, a traditional Azerbaijani folk music to create a distintive style. His three Jazz Compositions release from 1974-79 on the Soviet state record label, Melodiya, are particularly worth listening to.

Since the 1990s, another fine pianist/composer who has made an international name for herself is Amina Figarova, who studied at Berklee College Of Music, and has been named one of DownBeat magazine’s rising stars. The Baku Jazz Center was founded in 2002 to support the music and musicians. In 2005, saxophonist Rain Sultanov founded the Baku International Jazz Festival (though there had been earlier attempts at presenting jazz festivals in the city), which has hosted a wide range of international headliners alongside Azerbaijani talent like pianist Elchin Shirinov, who has also made a name for himself on the London jazz scene.