BDB Bertsolaritzaren datu-basea

Music plays a signifi cant role in the national culture of modern Azerbaijan. Considering this, the paper describes the initial period of the formation of the Azerbaijani singing school of the end of the 19th – the fi rst half of the 20th centuries. The author of the article focuses on those socio-historical circumstances and personalities who infl uenced the specifi cs of the Azerbaijani modern singing school. Therefore, special attention is paid to two soloists and connoisseurs of Azerbaijani music: Jabbar Garyagdioglu and Bulbul. The former, although grew up in the traditional environment of folklore singers, performed mughams in a new, theatrical form on stages of concert halls. The change in the place and form of mugham performance laid the foundation for the emergence of the main genre of modern national music in Azerbaijan – mugham opera. Bulbul’s contribution for the formation of the Azerbaijani singing school, in turn, is that he developed an original singing technique, the specifi city of which is the synthesis of modifi ed norms of vocal performance of classical music of the western type and folklore art, primarily mugham. Due to technical innovations, the national music of Azerbaijan is not only interesting, but also comprehensible to a foreign listener. The study is based on the author’s fi eld ethnographic material collected in Azerbaijan (Baku and neighbouring areas) in 2017–2019. The main methods used: participant observation, as well as interviews in Russian and Azerbaijani with representatives of the musical community of the capital of Azerbaijan, conducted in accordance with the oral history methodology.

Keywords: khanende | Azerbaijani mugham | mugham opera | Jabbar Garyagdioglu | Uzeyir Hajibeyov | Bulbul | folk music | national culture | Azerbaijan.