Mugham

For the town in Armenia, see Mugam, Armenia.

Mugham also spelled as Mugam (Azeri: Muğam) is one of the many musical traditions of Azerbaijan, contrast with tasnif. During Mugam, the singers have to transform their emotions into singing and music. It is a highly complex form of art music with specific systems and concepts of musical expression that demand of its performers a very high standard of professionalism. Azerbaijan also has a great tradition of composers and musicians of western classical music. Fikret Amirov (1922-1984) was the first Azeri composer of classical music to write mugams for symphony orchestras. Such works are obviously very different from traditional mugam formations but in fact incorporate many mugam idioms. On the level of musicians, there remains a strict separation between classical and “traditional” music in terms of training. Even if the musicians are educated at one and the same conservatory they stick to one camp.

Mugam belongs to the system of modal music and has close ties to the Persian musical tradition. It is therefore meta-ethnical, because it is not restricted to one particular region but covers a wide area of the Middle and Far East. The Uighurs in Xinjian (Sinkiang) call this musical development “Muqam,” the Uzbeks and Tajiks call it “Maqom” (also “Shasmaqom”), while the Arabs, Persians call it “Maqam", or "Dastgah”. In Azerbaijan the word is Mugam. It is based on many different modes and tonal scales where different relations between notes and scales are envisaged and developed.

The meta-ethnicity (and dazzling complexity) of this music also becomes apparent in the fact that terms such as “mugam,” “maqam,” or “dastgah,” omnipresent in oriental music, can mean one thing in the Turkish tradition, while the same term in the music of Uzbekistan takes on quite another meaning, and yet another in the classical Arabian tradition. So, in one culture “mugam” may be related to a strictly fixed melodic type, while in another it is only the cadences, i. e. the melody endings that are associated with it. In a third culture it may only correspond to a specific type of tone scales.

It is therefore not surprising that reference works give insufficient information (if any at all) about the concept, since it is not easy to define: “[M]usicologists mutter something incomprehensible (because, with a few exceptions, they don’t know either), and the Azeri people explain it in such a roundabout manner that it is impossible to work it out.” (Skans).

Mugham contains 7 main frets in itself

In the course of last years, Azerbaijan folk music was existed in the frames of folklore art. The vocal - instrumental forms of folklore contain in themselves the elements of polyphony. The peculiarity of folk music clarifies itself firstly with the development of fret system. It contains 7 main frets in itself - rast, shur, segyakh (are especially spread), shushter, bayati-shiraz, chargyakh, khumayun and 3 collateral kinds - shakhnaz, sarendj, chargyakh in some other form. Before it was considered that, each of the frets has its special vivid emotional meaning. Rast - embodies courage and energy: chargyakh - passion, excitation; shushter - deep sadness; segyakh - the harmony of love (it is not by chance that segyakh is considered as an inflexionable basis of majority of lyrical - love songs) and etc. Every fret represents strongly organized scale, possessing firm tonic prop (maye), and each step of the fret has its melodically function.

Analysis of Mugam

Part of the confusion arises from the fact that the term itself can have two different, if related meanings. The famous Azeri composer Gara Garayev has the following explanation: “The expression ‘Mugam’ is used in two senses in the folk music of Azerbaijan. On the one hand the word ‘Mugam’ describes the same thing as the term ‘lad’ [Russian for key, mode, scale]. An analysis of Azeri songs, dances and other folk-music forms show that they are always constructed according to one [of these] modes. On the other hand the term ‘Mugam’ refers to an individual, multi-movement form. This form combines elements of a suite and a rhapsody, is symphonic in nature, and has its own set of structural rules. In particular one should observe that the ‘Suite-Rhapsody-Mugam’ is constructed according to one particular ‘Mode-Mugam’ and is subject to all of the particular requirements of this mode.” (Sovietskaya Muzkya 1949:3).

“Mugam,” describe a specific type of musical composition and performance, which is hard to grasp with western concepts of music in another respect: for one, Mugam composition is improvisational in nature. At the same time it follows exact rules. Furthermore, in the case of a “Suite-Rhapsody-Mugam” the concept of improvisation is not really an accurate one, since the artistic imagination of the performers is based on a strict foundation of principles determined by the respective mode. The performance of mugams does therefore not present an amorphous and spontaneous, impulsive improvisation.

With respect to the concept of improvisation, Mugam music is often put in relation to jazz, a comparison that is accurate to a certain point only. Although Mugam does allow for a wide margin of interpretation, an equation with jazz is oversimplified, since it fails to account for the different kinds of improvisation for different Mugam modes. The performance of a certain Mugam may last for hours. (For the uninitiated listener it is close to impossible to know whether a musician is actually improvising or playing a prearranged composition.) Furthermore, as Garayev stresses, Mugam music has a symphonic character.

The songs are often based on the ancient poetry of Azerbaijan, and although love is a common topic in these poems, to the uninitiated ear many of the intricacies and allusions are lost. For one, the poems do not primarily deal with worldly love but with the mystical love for god. Yet, strictly speaking, this is still secular music/poetry, as opposed to, say, Sufism. Nevertheless, mugam composition is designed very similarly to Sufism in that it seeks to achieve ascension from a lower level of awareness to a transcendental union with god. It is a spiritual search for god.

UNESCO and Mugam

In 2003, UNESCO has acknowledged the authenticity, richness and cultural significance of mugham both national and global culture, and in 2003 announced it as a “Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”.

Considered to be the classical music of Azerbaijan, the Mugham is a traditional musical form characterized by a large degree of improvisation and draws upon popular stories and local melodies. The recent evolution of the cultural industry has threatened the improvisational nature and the ear-to-ear transmission of this art form. During his official visit to the country in August 2005, the Director-General of UNESCO, in the company of President Aliyev and several Goodwill Ambassadors, attended a foundation stone-laying ceremony of a Mugham Centre. In 2004, Mehriban Aliyeva, the First Lady of Azerbaijan, was named as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the oral and musical traditions.