Vagif Mustafazadeh - Mart

Mustafazadeh (1940-1979) was an Azerbaijani jazz pianist and composer, acclaimed for fusing jazz and the traditional Azerbaijani folk music known as mugham. According to many world famous jazz musicians, Mustafazadeh is one of the pioneers and “the architect of jazz in Azerbaijan“. 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, Mustafazade listened to jazz pieces, learning from movies where he heard jazz music and BBC radio and sang Meykhana, 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 center of locally inspired jazz. By this time, Mustafazade was making his way to his audience and his popularity grew. His na