Examination of Sayat Nova's works in in the context of the art of Azerbaijani ashug

Abstract

Azerbaijan, playing the role of a bridge between the ancient East and the West, attracted the attention of its strategically powerful neighbors, and they maintained mutual cultural relationships with the country, which was rich in natural resources. In fact, the Silk Road passing through Azerbaijan and the mutual relationships between the western and eastern countries of our country played a big role in the formation of the culture of our people. Musicians and wordsmiths have worked in Azerbaijan at times. The national music, such as mughams, tasnifs, ashug music, folklore samples are the national wealth of the Azerbaijani people. The art of ashug is an ancient syncretic art form. Ashug was called an ozan (trans.: ashug) in the past, but in modern times, Ashug is a music performer, singer, khananda (singer), composer, actor, dancer, master of artistic recitation, ashug is a poet, scientist, epic story teller, comic actor and pedagogue. Ashug school in Azerbaijan was spread widely in the 18^th-19^th centuries. The ashug school was also developing later. Interesting and talented ashugs grew up. Ashug Gurbani, Abbas Tufarganli, Kheste Gasim, Valeh, Shamkirli Huseyn, Ali, Alasgar, Molla Juma, Aghdabanli Gurban, Huseyn Bozalganli, Mirza Bilal and others are considered as distinguished ashugs of Azerbaijan. The article deals the development of the musical culture of Azerbaijani ashugs. However, in spite of all this, our aim in the article is to write about forgotten art masters and sazandas (musicians). Besides the representatives of other nations, Azerbaijani researchers also wrote about forgotten ashugs. One such master is Sayat Nova. Ashug Sayat Nova wrote and created in several languages. Most of his goshmas (a form of an Azerbaijani poem), tajnis (a form of lyrical poem in Azerbaijani ashug literature) and poems were written in Azerbaijani language. Besides Azerbaijani, Sayat Nova also composed in Armenian and Georgian.Sayat Nova, who wrote and spoke in Azerbaijani, started to write only in this language when he was 18-20 years old, in Georgian after a few years, and in Armenian after reaching the age of 30. So, most of his goshmas that have come down to us, i.e. 115 are in Azerbaijani, 60 in Armenian and 37 in Georgian. Georgian writer Zezva Medulashvili showed the dialects of Tbilisi Turkic, Tbilisi Georgian and Tbilisi Armenian of that time in his book “Sayat Nova”. The translation of 24 poems of ashug in Azerbaijani was given in the book. Sayat Nova’s poems have been translated into Russian by many poets. We can cite the names of M.Lozinsky, S.Shervinsky, V.Potapova, V.Brusov, E. Nikolayevsky and others among them. The sources cited in the article are fundamental literature.The goshmas and poems by several Azerbaijani ashugs, as well as Ashug Sayat Nova, which have not been published in any scientific press, are presented in the research article “The art of Azerbaijani ashug in the context of researches and revelations”. I think that Ashug Sayat’s works will be investigated more deeply by Azerbaijani musicologists and other art historians and will be made available to the readers in the future.