'Mugham Hour' interactive performance to be presented in Icherisheher

"Mu?am Saat?" (Mugham Hour), an interactive sound performance will take place in Icherisheher on June 18.

"Mu?am Saat?" is an installation and performance project inspired by the iconic radio program broadcast on Azerbaijan State Radio during the 1950s-60s. This program reflects the regular broadcasts of traditional music recordings that were extremely popular among the public during that era.

The main goal of the project is to revive the musical sound that was heard everywhere during that period, a mysterious and ever-present voice.

So, even if you do not have a radio at home, you might hear the sounds of that program through an open shop window or from a distant summer house in Absheron.

To recreate this feeling, recordings of that radio program will be played from various devices in different parts of Icherisheher (Old City) between 14:00 and 15:00.

Being one of the oldest musical styles in the East, mugham music never ceases to amaze music enthusiasts around the globe, serving as a major element in uniting people.

The mugham contains seven main modes - Rast, Shur, Segah (are especially common), Shushtar, Bayaty-Shiraz, Chahargah, Humayun, and three collateral kinds - Shahnaz, Sarendj, and Chaargah in some other form.

UNESCO proclaimed Azerbaijani Mugham a "Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" (2008). The Mugham art entered the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2008.

Azerbaijan's prominent composers used mugham in their music pieces. Fikrat Amirov pioneered the symphonic mugham genre with three symphonic mugams - "Shur", "Kurd-Ovshary" in 1948, and "Gulustan Bayati-Shiraz" in 1971. Uzeyir Hajibayli composed the opera "Leyli and Majnun" based on mugham.