The Voice of Azerbaijan: Experiencing Recordings of Hajibaba Huseynov and post-Soviet Muslim Musical Identities

Authors

Polina Dessiatnitchenko, Waseda UniversityFollow

Abstract

Singer and poet Hajibaba Huseynov (1919–1993), revered by some as the “voice of Azerbaijan” is one of the most popular stars featured in recordings of classical devotional ghazal poetry. Curiously enough, video or audio recordings of his recitations seem to be especially moving, often becoming the focal point for audiences of musicians and poets at public live performances, private meetings, lessons, and virtual contexts. While fans of the ghazal genre are found at every turn, I limit my analysis to the subculture of poets, musicians, experts, and especially ardent fans of traditional Azerbaijani arts. Relying on ethnographic data gathered in Azerbaijan’s capital Baku and surrounding suburban villages, I explore the affective responses of this subculture’s participants, focusing on hermeneutics and the sensation of movement induced by the recordings of Hajibaba’s recitations. Participants are transported spatially across borders to Iran and the wider East, as well as temporally to an idealized past and its venues in which pure forms of traditional arts were maintained. In both cases, sounds featured in the media contribute to the sensation of movement and I explore how they are experienced to make social and political realities.

Author Biography

Polina Dessiatnitchenko is an Assistant Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, where she is teaching ethnomusicology and musicology courses. Polina is also a co-investigator in a UKRI/ERC funded project "Maqam Beyond Nation." She completed her PhD in ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto in 2017, where she was awarded the Garfield Weston Fellowship and Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Doctoral Graduate Scholarship for her doctoral research on Azerbaijani mugham. Polina has been working on her first monograph while holding a Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University’s Department of Music from 2018 until 2021. In addition to her current teaching at Waseda University, she designed and taught her own courses at the University of Toronto, Tufts University and Doshisha University. Her research interests include Azerbaijani mugham, tar, creativity, phenomenology, affect theory, ghazal poetry, media studies, əruz, Islamic aesthetics, Soviet and post-Soviet studies, and postcolonial studies. Polina is also a performer on the Azerbaijani tar.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Dessiatnitchenko, Polina (2023) "The Voice of Azerbaijan: Experiencing Recordings of Hajibaba Huseynov and post-Soviet Muslim Musical Identities," Yale Journal of Music & Religion: Vol. 9: No. 2, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17132/2377-231X.1262