Monday, 19 October 2015

Habil Aliyev (28 May 1927 – 8 September 2015) - In his memory: LP "Kemancha" published in 1990 in Azerbaijan


We only received recently the sad news that Habil Aliyev, the great Kemencheh master from Azerbaijan, past away on september 8th. Here we offer in his memory a LP we bought at a memorable concert in Cologne in 1993 in which he participated. Both me and my wife were very impressed by his stage presence and his very noble, almost regal bearing and of course his exquisite music. I knew him already before from recordings. It might have been that I bought this LP already before in an Iranian shop in Cologne which used to have a whole pile of LPs from Sowjet Azerbaijan. He was probably the greatest Kemencheh player of the 20th century, held in very high esteem in his country and also in Iran, where he performed reguarly, occasionally with Shajarian, and also recorded. I have two Iranian cassettes by him, which a couple of years ago were republished on CD. The CDs can be obtained from info@raga-maqam-dastgah.com.
In the west there was only one CD published in 1992 by Auvidis, no longer available for many many years, and two CDs of the ensemble which I saw in 1993 in Cologne, published in 1994 by Institut du Monde Arabe/Blue Silver, also no longer available for many years and never republished. The ensemble consisted of Habil Aliev, the great tar player Ramiz Gouliev, the two singers Zahid Gouliev and Elza Gaybalieva and the nagara player Ali Amiraslanov. These two CDs contained also a number of solos by the two instrumentalists. It's a pity that they were on the market only for quite a short period. 
For more info see:
http://habilaliyev.az/eng/diskoqrafiya/plastinka.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habil_Aliyev


Side 1:
1. Dilkesh and Tesnif
2. Chahargah


Side 2:
1. Bayati-Hajar and Tesnif
2. Bayati-Shiraz and Tesnif


accompanied by:
Agagusyn Samed-Zade - Garmon (used here as a drone)
Beyukaga Muradov - Nagara (in the Tesnifs)


Zhuzhu had posted this LP already in 2011 on her excellent blog, but only in mp3 format. See: http://zhuzhulingo.blogspot.de/2011/08/blog-post_05.html

1 comment:

Fattoxxon said...

Very sad to see this news. Finding this LP on Zhuzhu was a revelation, he has great technique but is (more importantly) such a good communicator. I have pointed several violinist friends at his music, because he makes the kamancheh 'sing' just as well as a classical musician can make the violin sing. There are some wonderful videos on YouTube as well, in many of which you can see him really enjoying the music-making, and how often do you see musicians actually smiling & laughing as they perform?! His death is a great loss to music, not just to 'world' music.

Thanks for the re-post as well, though I have been very careful not to lose those mp3 files from Zhuzhu! :-)

David