Azernews.Az

By Laman Ismayilova

Azerbaijan’s honored art worker, famous ashig (a folk singer-poet ) Samira Aliyeva together with her students has held a flash mob at the Heydar Aliyev International Airport.

The flash mob was dedicated to the promotion of ashiq art and the support of Baku 2017 Islamic Solidarity Games, which will be held in Baku on May 12-22, Trend Life reported.

The five-minute flash mob featured the song "Motherland" by ashiq Panakh.

"Azerbaijan pays a great attention to the development and promotion of national music. UNESCO included Azerbaijani mugham, ashiq art, and performance on the instrument “tar” into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The Islamic Games in Baku is not only a global sporting event, but also a great opportunity to tell and show many foreign guests our wonderful country, its culture and heritage, architectural monuments and modern buildings, national cuisine and traditions", said Samira Aliyeva.

Ashiq art began to form in Azerbaijan since ancient times. It is a music form of oral art formed in folk environment and in terms of impact strength, popularity and uniqueness of maturity it is an expression having no analogue.

Classical heritage of Azerbaijani ashiqs consist of more than 200 songs, 150 dastans (large literary-musical compositions), 1500-2000 poems in different traditional poetic forms (goshma, garayli, tajnis, divani, mukhammas etc.).

Despite the regional differences ashiqs are united by a common national language, musical repertoire and the saz, an invariable attribute of the Azerbaijani ashiqs, which may be accompanied with such musical instruments as balaban, nagara, gosha nagara and gaval. Saz is one of the symbols of the Turkic world.

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Laman Ismayilova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Lam_Ismayilova

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