3 - Azerbaijan: Alim Qasimov [OCR 560013] and Notable Music Blogs

Notable Music Blogs

As we cross from Armenia into Azerbaijan, this would be a good opportunity to mention some impressive traditional/world music bloggers.

The notable MusicRepublic blog shared some liturgical music of Komitas, ripped from a Melodiya vinyl. They have also posted a very fine introduction to the music of Azerbaijan from UNESCO. It has solos of Bahram Mansurov (tar) and Habil Aliyev (kamancheh), which will hook a certain type of listener.

There are two vinyls of Armenian music shared by Zhuzhu, a terrific blogger of Soviet vinyl (and shellac): one a mix of popular folk tunes, the other a duduk album. Zhuzhu has shared considerably more music of Azerbaijan, ranging from opera to traditional songs to the music of ashiks. The Habil Aliyev would be a must-download, but the recording is available from the next blog in higher quality. If I had to suggest what to listen to next, it would be the albums of Azeri ashiks and mugham singers.

As anyone with a knowledge of music blogs would expect, the legendary Oriental Traditional Music blog probably has the most substantial offerings of the music of Azerbaijan, at least of any English-language blog. Tawfiq, the late publisher of this blog, shared some first-class music from everywhere between Morocco and Kyrgyzstan, and it is no surprise Azerbaijan is well represented. One could start with everything featuring the kamancheh virtuoso Habil Aliyev, one of the best to draw a bow in the age of recording. The man is in the company of Heifetz and Arditti, Casals and Rostropovich, Bundu Khan, or—in the same instrument—the Iranian Ali-Asghar Bahari. There are also several posts of Azerbaijan mugham singers, including four recordings that include Alim Qasimov.

There are other music blogs to mention, but it will wait for more relevant music. In many respects, my posts are nothing but footnotes to these much more impressive sites. There are truly years worth of listening that can be done from a handful of music blogs alone. I am humbly sharing a few things I have found, but my work is almost unnecessary given their work.

Alim Qasimov - Azerbaidjan [OCR 560013]

Tracklist:

1. Rast
2. Segah
3. Mahur
4. Chahargah
5. Nazli Yar

Alim Qasimov with Fakhreddin Dadashov, Valeh Rahimov, at Eldar Mansurov's home in Baku, 1987. Video recorded by Jean During. Be sure to subscribe to Jean During's YouTube channel, and hit that bell!

As for this Ocora album, it is from a performance recorded in Paris in 1992—before Qasimov became more familiar with Western audiences. But only four years later, Ocora releases another disc where it could be asked in the liner notes, without hyperbole, if Qasimov is the greatest singer of the age. And this is from a label that published a 5-CD set of qawwali by Nusrat Ali Fateh Khan! That said, it is a fair question.

The French liner notes run ten pages, and then repeated in English and German. They are written by Jean During—who has become, for me, as legendary as Qasimov. We will return to During again and again, and more will be said about him in later posts. I do not know a convenient way to download the liner notes from archive.org—I resort to right-click and save one at a time. To prevent people this hassle, I have uploaded a link just to the liner notes. The VBR mp3s must be downloaded through the m3u file or a program/browser app.

VBR MP3s + liner notes [Internet Archive]

liner notes [mega]

Downloading Help

If you save the streaming m3u file and open it in a text editor, you will see that it contains links to the mp3 files. You can save these mp3s by importing the list into a download manager or copying the list into JDownloader2.