SINGERS OF THE CAUCASUS
Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
March 18 2013
Author: VK
South Caucasian countries famous for their musical culture are almost
strangers to Eurovision. Armenia’s debut at the international song
contest took place in 2006, the Georgian one – in 2007, the Azerbaijani
one – in 2008. But Baku became the only Caucasian capital privileged
to take the competition at home. Now Transcaucasian republics are
being prepared to Eurovision-2013 to be held in Malmo.
According to Artur Gasparyan, music critic, showman, they “are
very active in the context of the Eurovision Song Contest. They are
very successful, especially Azerbaijan which is making seven-league
strides. This is a laudable trend, it is the integration not only of
Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, but also of other new young states
in the European world musical process, at least in the musical process
in the context of the Eurovision Song Contest, because Eurovision is
not world music. Eurovision has very little to do with contemporary
show business, in general; these are two structures which develop
in a parallel mode. The charts in London, New York or Los Angeles,
as you know, or even in Germany and in France and Italy, are not very
different from what is going on in the Eurovision. This is a sort of
Olympics in music, where creative and personal ambitions as well as
the ambitions of participating states are realized. That is, it is a
kind of musical contest, competition, and the more active the countries
in this show are, including the Caucasian countries such as Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia, the better, since life is in movement”.
“Caucasian musicians, I call them that in general, because there
are so many nationalities, always made me respect them due to their
very reverent attitude to what I call the music”, Alexander Gradsky,
musician, told VK in an interview. “This has always been obvious.
Incidentally, there were several representatives of the Caucasian
peoples at the “Golos”, who have shown their best, at least in my
opinion. I had a wonderful drummer, Armen Chaldranyan, who worked in
“Skhomorokhi” for about two years, he was a great guy and a very
good musician”.
Speaking of his impressions of tours in the South Caucasus, Alexander
Gradsky said: “At my time I have been in many places. There were always
very good concerts, wonderful ones. I visited Baku a very, very long
time ago, but I have a lot of wonderful memories of the audience,
about how people received us, that’s for sure. Somehow we went to
swim in the port area, and then tried to wash the oil smell out,
these things also happened. Now perhaps it is much better. But what
I see, the panoramas that are shown, I see that the republics are
growing and evolving very nicely. In general, I have no divisions,
I do not divide people according to their ethnicity. I can say only
say one thing: there is a very good attitude in the Caucasus to what
is proper music. I think this is very important”.
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From: A. Papazian