An article about the alternative rock and rap music scene in Azerbaijan, a country in the South Caucasus region. Azerbaijan is about 95 percent Muslim – mostly Shiite. Recent music has tended to be nationalist in theme, but the alternative voices are reported to be taking a contemporary, “progressive” (read ‘Western’) slant.
Or are they? I noticed in this youtube video from the group HOST Alliance that the first line of this song is the first line of al-Fatihah (which is all I could recognize since I don’t speak Azerbaijani). Could a movement that mashes up Western protest music forms with elements of Islamic identity be forming where the Western reporter would recognize the former but be oblivious to the latter?
Anyway, here’s some more on HOST Alliance:
Of course, the authorities are also well aware of the potential for change that alternative music brings with it. Last month, for example, one Azeri newspaper reported that fans of another rap band, H.O.S.T Alliance, were being intimidated by national security service agents in the Azeri exclave of Nakhichevan. Fifteen youth were detained for eight hours by National Security Ministry operatives and instructed not to listen to the band’s music which they reportedly claimed was “subversive.”
The band too has not been spared from unwanted attention from the authorities. Although it released its first album in 2007, H.O.S.T Alliance has not been able to sell it openly in Azerbaijan. Instead, the music has been distributed freely from person to person. H.O.S.T Alliance too has also been detained and warned not to write any more “anti-State” songs while the police are known to demand fans they encounter delete the band’s music off their mobile phones.
More videos from HOST Alliance here, here, and in English, here.