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Ashough Khidir - Selminaz: Tabasaranian Folk and Pop

by Ored Recordings

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about

The video "Tabasaran ashug Khidir" made by the mysterious "Tabasaran pictures" with an elderly man playing the saz had immediately attracted our attention. It turned out that Khidir is a relative of our friend that had no connection with our label, and it helped us to find the ashug.

On the next day after Akhty festival we traveled to the Rubas village, where Khidir lives. He mistook us for a local channel TV group and showed no enthusiasm about the upcoming recording. ”I'll play you three minutes - enough for your show."
As we continued, he understood that we were there not for a beautiful picture and a tedious song, but that we had been mesmerized by the tabasaran cullture and made our way especially for this recording - and he opened his heart for us.

Khidir is a self-taught musician, he didn’t graduate from any musical college and was an apprentice of elder ashugs. He mastered his ability to play saz (or as it is called “chungur” by Lezgins and Tabasarans) simply because it was popular amongst the locals. His repertoire consists of author and Tabasaran popular songs: about a village Chere, beautiful Celmins, grumpy wife and the feast of the harvest. We weren’t able to figure out of what period folklore things were, but based upon the choice of its topics it seems that the biggest part of it was made in Soviet Union.

Ahug Khidir is very different from the rest of the peers - he almost never uses the standard ashug tunes, not improvises with the instrumental part, and just sings with a minimum accompaniment of his chungur. The musician has a different approach to the ashug art: Khidir works in Rubas House of culture, whilst writing and playing music for him is something like an important hobby. All the ashugs we met in Dagestan and later in Azerbaijan lived off their music. Ashug as a profession is a сanon. Although Khidir does not fit any traditional expectations on what the real ashug is, nobody would doubt that he’s the one.

Sound: Timur Kodzoko,
Sound editing: Timur Kodzoko
Image: Elizaveta Wdowina
Cover art: Milana Khalilova
Notes: Bulat Khalilov
Special thanks to Shamil Sherifaliev and Alexander Efimov

Recorded in Derbent, Dagestan.

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Полный текст об экспедиции опубликован на сайте "Ножа"

Запись звука: Тимур Кодзоков
Правка звука, сведение: Тимур Кодзоков
Фото: Елизавета Вдовина
Дизайн обложки: Милана Халилова.
Текст: Булат Халилов.


Отдельное спасибо за помощь в организации экспедиции Шамилю Шарифалиеву и Александру Ефимову

Записано в селе Рубас, Дагестан
04.2016

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released July 22, 2020

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Ored Recordings Düsseldorf, Germany

Traditional and local music from the Caucasus and beyond

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