Music of Azerbaijan

Azerbaijani music is a broad tradition from the South Caucasus that spans courtly modal art music (mugham), bardic ashig poetry-singing, rural dance bands with zurna–naghara, and 20th–21st century composed, pop, and jazz hybrids. Its art core is the modal system of mugham—suites built on named modes (Rast, Shur, Segah, Chargah, Bayati-Shiraz, Shushtar, Humayun), microtonal inflection, and improvisation by a khananda (vocalist) accompanied by tar, kamancha, and gaval. Alongside this stands the ashig (ashugh) tradition, in which poet-singers accompany themselves on the saz to deliver epic love, mystic, and social poetry in intricate meters. Across the 20th century, Azerbaijani composers, crooners, and innovators fused these idioms with opera, symphonic writing, estrada/pop, and jazz to create distinct modern styles such as symphonic mugham and jazz-mugham.