Alim Qasimov
Alim Qasimov is Azerbaijan's best known and most beloved singer, a modest virtuoso who is equally at home in the domains central to Azeri musical culture: classical art music, or mugham, and the urban bardic tradition of the ashiq (or ashig). The ashiq is like a modern-day troubadour who is at once poet, entertainer and lyric philosopher. Mugham is the Azeri form of the vast maqâm tradition that has flourished for centuries in the sophisticated urban cultures of the Middle East, North Africa, and Central Asia. Consisting of long suites of art songs interspersed with quasi-improvised instrumental pieces, mugham is an ideal vehicle for the display of musical passion and virtuosity.
Qasimov did not grow up in a musical family, only coming to music as a teenager. After serving in the army and working in the local oil industry, he began a musical apprenticeship to the great mugham singer Agha Khan Abdullaev. In the 1980s, Qasimov began to tour in Europe with a small ensemble and first performed in the United States at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival of 1988. His international touring and recording activities expanded through the 1990s, and in 1999, in recognition of his important contribution to world musical culture, Alim Qasimov was awarded the prestigious International IMC-UNESCO Music Prize.
Unlike some performers of traditional music who have remained firmly within the bounds of older styles and performance practices, Alim Qasimov has distinguished himself as a relentless musical adventurer. He has performed with Azerbaijani pop and jazz ensembles, sung avant-garde chamber music as a member of the multicultural Silk Road Ensemble (founded and directed by cellist Yo-Yo Ma), played the male lead in a production of Azerbaijani composer Uzeyir Hajibeyov's experimental Azerbaijani mugham opera Leili and Majnun and developed new contrapuntal approaches to the performance of classical mugham, working together with his daughter, vocalist Fergana Qasimova. To all of his diverse performance activities, Alim Qasimov brings a charged charisma and transcendent vocal quality that offers sure evidence of music's power not only to entertain, but to effect inner transformation. —Theodore C. Levin