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The ‘90s - A Time Of Releasing Meykhana From “Soviet prison”
The video shortly introduced one of the most popular meykhana performers in Azerbaijan, Agamirze, born in 1962, who inherited the ability to perform meykhana from his uncle, Agasalim Childaq.
Meykhana is an Azerbaijani folk rap tradition, performed spontaneously by one or more people, who improvise a text on a particular subject without any preparation. To Westerns, it is evocative of rap, however, to locals, it is more traditional, in its total spontaneity. Today, it is one of the most widespread folklore genres on the Absheron Peninsula, of Azerbaijan.
Meykhana (a persian word) means ‘the place of the wine.’
In this century, the era of meykhana can be divided into three periods: in the 1920s (pre-Soviet), during Soviet times (1920-1991), and after Soviet times, from 1991 forward.
The first period was a free movement, and the strongest period for Meykhana, unlike the second, which was considered to be a ‘prison’ for this culture, as it was forbidden, and only started to revive after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Independence. However, after gaining independence, when meykhana had the potential to attract popularity again, fundamentalists came against this traditional genre and called it ‘very liberal that promotes sex, alcohol, drugs’ and publicised that it was contrary to national traditional values.
During the Soviet Period, the Azerbaijani poet, Aliaga Vahid, in his poems, rhymed meykhana in the way that is done today, the contemporary way.
Nizami Ramzi was considered the first meykhana master to ever perform on national television and in popular movies.
Today, traditional meykhana performers kept the classical style that was used through the last decades, and the others combined meykhana with different musical genres and make it more modernized.
The popularity of meykhana increased in the 1990s and into the 2000s. The TV channels popularized meykhana with such tv programs as De, Gəlsin! (Say, Come On!) in ANS TV and made meykhana significant in Azerbaijani weddings.
The video shortly introduced one of the most popular meykhana performers in Azerbaijan, Agamirze, born in 1962, who inherited the ability to perform meykhana from his uncle, Agasalim Childaq.
Agamirza describes today’s situation with meykhana and compares it with the ‘90s when all the doors were closed and suddenly opened………