Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

A colorful concert of Ashiq art entitled “It’s good to have you, beautiful Saz” will be held in Baku on June 25.

The concert, organized by the Azerbaijan Ashiqs Association will gather famous ashiqs at 19:00 at the Heydar Aliyev Place.

The art of Azerbaijani Ashiqs was included in the UNESCO`s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2009, as a symbol of national cultural identity that embodies various artistic spheres practiced by poets, composers, singers or actor-narrators, thus uniting in one artistic expression the communities of the entire country.

The art of Azerbaijani Ashiqs combines poetry, storytelling, dance and vocal and instrumental music into a traditional performance art that is a symbol of Azerbaijani culture. Characterized by the accompaniment of the Saz, a stringed musical instrument, the classical repertoire includes 200 songs, 150 literary-musical compositions known as dastans, nearly 2,000 poems in different traditional poetic forms and numerous stories.

The stringed musical instrument, Saz is played solo and in ensembles. The classical music for Saz, Azerbaijani Mugham, is a unique form of vocal and instrumental folk music tradition.

Saz is one of the symbols of the Turkic world. The instrument got its final shape in the 16th century. It is sounded mainly with plectrum made of cork of cherry tree. In most cases, the arm and sides body of Saz are adorned with pearls.

Body of this beautiful musical instrument is made of selected kinds of mulberry tree, and its arm is made of walnut wood.

Azerbaijani Saz differs from Saz and similar instruments spread among other Turkic-speaking peoples in terms of its musical technique, sound acoustics with the undeniable advantages. In Azerbaijan, Saz is distinguished by its size and strings.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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