The bağlama or saz is a family of plucked string instruments and long-necked lutes used in Ottoman classical music, Turkish folk music, Turkish Arabesque music, Azerbaijani music, Bosnian music (Sevdalinka), Kurdish music, and Armenian music. It is played in several regions in the world such as Europe, Asia, Black Sea, Caucasus regions and many countries including Syria, Iraq, Iran and Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is commonly used by the ashiks.
Azerbaijani music is the musical tradition of the Azerbaijani people from Azerbaijan Republic. Azerbaijani music has evolved under the badge of monody, producing rhythmically diverse melodies. Music from Azerbaijan has a branch mode system, where chromatisation of major and minor scales is of great importance.
Azerbaijani literature is written in Azerbaijani, a Turkic language, which is the official state language of the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the North Azerbaijani variety is spoken. It is also natively spoken in Iran, where the South Azerbaijani variety is used, and is particularly spoken in the northwestern historic region of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijani is also spoken natively in Russia, Georgia and Turkey. While the majority of Azerbaijani people live in Iran, modern Azerbaijani literature is overwhelmingly produced in the Republic of Azerbaijan, where the language has official status. Three scripts are used for writing the language: Azerbaijani Latin script in the Republic of Azerbaijan, Arabic script in Iran and Cyrillic script formerly used in Soviet Azerbaijan.
Mugham or Mughamat is one of the many classical compositions from Azerbaijan, contrasting with tasnif and ashik.
An ashik or ashugh is traditionally a singer-poet and bard who accompanies his song—be it a dastan or a shorter original composition—with a long-necked lute in Azerbaijani culture, including Turkish and South Azerbaijani and non-Turkic cultures of South Caucasus. In Azerbaijan, the modern ashik is a professional musician who usually serves an apprenticeship, masters playing the bağlama, and builds up a varied but individual repertoire of Turkic folk songs.
Dastan is an ornate form of oral history, an epic, from Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan.
A khananda is a name generally given to singers of mugham, an Azeri folk music genre. The word is of Persian origin and means "singer". When performing traditional mugham, a khananda is accompanied by a trio of musicians who play the tar, the kamancheh and the daf (tambourine). Often the khananda is the daf-player.
Ismayil Shykhly, also known by his birth name Ismayil Shikhlinsky Gahraman oglu, was an Azerbaijani writer.
Ashig Alasgar was an Azerbaijani mystic troubadour (Ashik) and highly regarded poet of Azerbaijani folk songs. He was born in the village of Aghkilsa in the Goycha District of the Erivan Khanate.
Azerbaijani folklore is the folk tradition of Azerbaijani people.
Khasta Qasim – was an Iranian Azerbaijani poet of Azerbaijani literature. Khasta Qasim was one of the best Azerbaijani-language poets; he was also a mystic, ashik, and philosopher in the era of Afsharid Iran, popularly known as Dada and Gasim.
Abbas Tufarqanlı or Abbas Divarganli, or Abbas of Tufargan, was a 17th-century Azerbaijani ashik. He is regarded as one of the most prominent of all times.
Turkish hikaye is a narrative genre, which is a mixture of prose and poetry. Prose, the dominant part is narrated by an ashik and is interspersed with poems sung by the same artist to the accompaniment of saz.
Bayati is one of the oldest forms of Azerbaijani folk poetry. A bayati consists of four lines, each of which has seven syllables. The rhyme scheme is AABA. Anonymous bayati have been collected as folk wisdom in editions such as Azerbaijani: Xalqimizin deyimlari va duyumlari. Bayati can also be strung together in sequence to form longer poems, and there are several bayati dastan, epics, in which all of the verses are bayati; one example is Arzu-Qamber.
Ashiq Peri was a 19th-century ashiq regarded as the first prominent female Azerbaijani ashiq. Her poetry primarily consisted of verbal poetic duels, where she used various folk forms in Azerbaijani. Born in 1811 in the village of Maralyan in the Karabakh Khanate, she began writing poetry as a child and later moved to Shusha, the capital of the Karabakh Khanate. She often participated in local poetry contests, competing against and defeating her male counterparts, and eventually becoming the first renowned female ashiq in the region. She died young under unknown circumstances.
Armenian-Azerbaijani cultural relations are relations between two ethnic groups in terms of their language and culture.
Dirili Surkhay or Ashiq Surkhay Beyali oglu was an Azerbaijani ashug and poet.
Ashig Ali was one of the representatives of 19th century Azerbaijani ashiq poetry.
Zarnigar Derbentli is an Azerbaijani female ashik and one of the prominent representatives of the female ashig school of Azerbaijan in the 18th - 19th centuries.
