Jazz Mugham

Jazz mugham is the Azerbaijani fusion of jazz improvisation with mugham, the modal art music of the Caucasus: pianists and small groups improvise over mugham modes and their characteristic cadences, letting tar-like melodic turns and folk dance rhythms from Baku colour bebop and post-bop language. *Vagif Mustafazadeh* created the style in the 1970s, recording albums like "Aspiration" that Soviet jazz audiences took as proof a national jazz identity was possible, and his daughter *Aziza Mustafa Zadeh* carried it to international festival stages from the 1990s, followed by a younger Baku generation.