Azerbaijani pop music () is a

pop music Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop ...

created in

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

. The emergence of Azerbaijani pop music dates back to the mid-20th century. Growth of new generation of musicians in the 1970s positively influenced Azerbaijan pop music's "golden age". Performers of traditional pop music such as Mirza Babayev, Flora Karimova and Shovkat Alakbarova achieved great success at that time. Contemporary Azerbaijani pop music has its roots in traditional Azerbaijani folk music. As a result of globalisation, Azerbaijani pop music has been heavily influenced by both dance and electronic forms of pop music of the 1980s, as well as by genres of the 2000s such as

electropop Electropop is a popular music fusion genre combining elements of the electronic and pop styles. It has been described as a variant of synth-pop with emphasis on a hard electronic sound. The genre was developed in the 1980s and saw a rev ...

dance-pop Dance-pop is a Music genre, genre of electronic dance music that originated in the late 1970s to early 1980s. It is generally uptempo music intended for nightclubs with the intention of being danceable but also suitable for contemporary hit ra ...

and

synth-pop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s b ...

. In 2011, the song Running Scared (Ell & Nikki song), performed by the duo Ell & Nikki, was Azerbaijan's first-ever victory on European song contest Eurovision.

History

1960s

The early 1960s were probably the era when Azerbaijani pop music was most dependent on the group format, with pop acts, like rock bands, playing guitars and drums, with the occasional addition of keyboards or orchestration. Classical pop-folk music enjoyed mainstream popularity during this era, with artists such as Anatollu Ganiyev, Muslim Magomayev and Shahlar Guliyev.

1970s

The Azerbaijani pop music experienced during the late 1970s a golden age of productivity characterized by the rise of a new generation of musicians. The classical pop artists such as Rashid Behbudov, Mirza Babayev, Flora Karimova, Shovkat Alakbarova, Ogtay Aghayev, and Gulagha Mammadov experienced their greatest success at the start of the decade and maintained their popularity throughout the entire music history.

1980s

Akif Islamzade often considered one of the most successful and influential Azerbaijani male pop artists of the early 1980s. ''Baku chanson'', a subgenre of Russian chanson, picked up popularity for the mid 1980s. Artists such as Eyyub Yaqubov brought Baku chanson to popularity in 1992. However, many artists were uncomfortable with their success, and were equally suspicious of the chanson label.

1990s

In the early 1990s, the country music charts were dominated by pop singers with only tangential influences from regional music such as Niyameddin Musayev and Baloghlan Ashrafov, a trend that has continued since. In the 1990s, while the singles charts were dominated by boy bands and girl groups like Karvan and W Trio, artists like Aygun Kazimova, Faig Aghayev, Samir Bagirov, Zulfiyya Khanbabayeva and Brilliant Dadasheva also enjoyed their greatest level of mainstream success to date, and the rise of

World music "World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-English speaking countries, including quasi-traditional, Cross-cultural communication, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical ...

helped revitalise the popularity of

folk music Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

. During

first Nagorno-Karabakh War The First Nagorno-Karabakh War was an ethnic conflict, ethnic and territorial conflict that took place from February 1988 to May 1994, in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in southwestern Azerbaijan, between the majority ethnic Armenians of Nag ...

, in stark contrast to the upbeat dance based music of the scene was the emergence military bard that emerged as part of the independent or alternative folk scenes of the 1990s, following the lead of artists such as Shamistan Alizamanli and Mubariz Taghiyev.

2000s

The Azerbaijani pop singer Röya breakthrough at the early 2000s led to her major international success in many Turkic speaking countries, especially the

Iranian Azerbaijan Azerbaijan or Azarbaijan (, , ), also known as Iranian Azerbaijan, is a historical region in northwestern Iran that borders Iraq and Turkey to the west and Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the Azerbaijani exclave of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republ ...

and

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

in addition to the music scene of Azerbaijan. At the beginning of the new millennium, while talent show contestants were one of the major forces in pop music, as country made its debut appearance at the 2008

Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), often known simply as Eurovision, is an international Music competition, song competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) among its members since 1956. Each participating broadcaster ...

. The country's

entry Entry may refer to: *Entry, West Virginia, an unincorporated community in the United States *Entry (cards), a term used in trick-taking card-games *Entry (economics), a term in connection with markets *Entry (film), ''Entry'' (film), a 2013 Indian ...

gained the third place in 2009 and fifth the following year. Ell and Nikki won the first place at the Eurovision Song Contest 2011 with the song " Running Scared", entitling Azerbaijan to host the contest in

2012 2012 was designated as: *International Year of Cooperatives *International Year of Sustainable Energy for All Events January *January 4 – The Cicada 3301 internet hunt begins. * January 12 – Peaceful protests begin in the R ...

, in Baku. On contrary, many music critics argued that the surge of Yeni Ulduz (Pop Idol) type competitions and reality shows on Azerbaijani TV has only added to the pop industry's shallow image, and is cited as the reason why underground and reactionary music is becoming more popular.

2010s

Influenced by

globalization Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...

of the world music,

synthpop Synth-pop (short for synthesizer pop; also called techno-pop; ) is a music genre that first became prominent in the late 1970s and features the synthesizer as the dominant musical instrument. It was prefigured in the 1960s and early 1970s ...

and electrohop, along with other forms of

dance Dance is an The arts, art form, consisting of sequences of body movements with aesthetic and often Symbol, symbolic value, either improvised or purposefully selected. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...

electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that came to prominence in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mos ...

and

that started in the 1980s, have become the dominant form of music in the Azerbaijan in the early 2010s. Despite the commercial dominance of hip-hop and pop during this period, rapper Miri Yusif found success with his reggae and soul fusion album "Karma", peaked at number 1 in the Azerbaijani Albums Chart in 2010.Also in 2018 the most viewed azerbaijani song belongs to Miri Yusif " Ad günü " (ft. Dilara Kazimova ) . Azerbaijan pop music industry keep growing up with Youtube mashups.

Notable performers

Individuals

Female

* Aygun Kazimova * Tunzala Aghayeva * Shovkat Alakbarova * Sevda Alakbarzadeh * Nushaba Alasgarly * Safura Alizadeh * Sheyla * Sabina Babayeva * Elnara * Nazpari Dostaliyeva * Khumar Gadimova * Ilhama Gasimova * Irada Ibrahimova * Nigar Jamal * Manana Japaridze * Flora Karimova * Konul Karimova * Dilara Kazimova * Zulfiyya Khanbabayeva * Zeynab Khanlarova * Aysel Teymurzadeh * Röya * Nahide Babashli

Male

* Emin Agalarov * Aghadadash Aghayev * Faig Aghayev * Samir Bagirov * Ogtay Aghayev * Shamistan Alizamanli * Mirza Babayev * Abbas Baghirov * Rashid Behbudov *

Bulbul The bulbuls are members of a family, Pycnonotidae, of medium-sized passerine songbirds, which also includes greenbuls, brownbuls, leafloves, and bristlebills. The family is distributed across most of Africa and into the Middle East, tropic ...

* Polad Bülbüloğlu * Nadir Gafarzade * Eldar Gasimov * Talıb Tale * Huseynagha Hadiyev * Akif Islamzade * Muslim Magomayev * Farid Mammadov * Adalet Shukurov * Mubariz Taghiyev * Eyyub Yaqubov * Miri Yusif * Elariz Mammadoğlu

Groups

* Ell & Nikki

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Azerbaijani Pop Music Azerbaijani pop music Music of Azerbaijan pop Pop music by country