Gochag Askarov

Early career

Gochag Askarov was born in 1978 in Garabagh, a beautiful mountain area of Azerbaijan, which is famous for its musicians and, especially, for good singers. At the age of six he chanced to sing for the first time at a public stage in his hometown Füzuli. A little boy singing everywhere – at home, in the forests and mountains that surrounded their village, he was possessed by desire to become a professional singer; without knowledge of his parents he enrolled for music school but soon had to stop his music studies in 1992 with Armenian occupation of Garabagh. His family, along with hundreds of others, had to leave their house and cattle to escape from death. For a few years they had to lead life of refugees wandering from one town to another until settled in Baku. In the face of all the hardships he suffered for those years he remained persistent in following his vocation. In 1998 he was accepted to the Baku Music College to the class of Mugham vocals. From 2004 to 2008 he studied music and traditional vocals at the National Conservatoire in Baku. In 2006 while being a student he took part in the First National TV Contest for young khanende (Mugham singers) and became one of its winners.

The next year he was invited to perform at the stage of Brunei Gallery Theatre in London. That was his international debut and, at the same time, his first solo concert. The same year for the first time the BBC Radio 3 featured him in its “World Routes” programme, and since then has done it many times. In 2009 BBC Radio 3 invited him to perform at its stage at the WOMAD festival in the Charlton-park in London. The booklet issued to the festival introduced him this way: “Over the past 27 years of WOMAD, we`ve encountered plenty of truly astonishing singers. Add one more to this list”.

The same year Gochag Askarov won the First Prize of the notable International World Music Festival in Samarqand (Uzbekistan).

Since 2007, for eight years of his public music activity, 36-year old Gochag Askarov has performed at most important international world music festivals around the globe, including WOMAD (UK, 2009), WOMADelaide, (Australia, 2010), Taranaki (New Zealand, 2010), WOMEX (Greece, 2012), Proms (UK, 2013), SXSW (United States, 2014), and dozens of other international music festivals in Europe, Asia, and Middle East, such as Musica dei Popoli (Italy, 2012 ) RASA Muziek & Dans (The Netherlands, 2012), Casa Asia Festival (Spain, 2012 ), Shanghai World Music Festival (China, 2014), Jerusalem Oud Festival (Israel, 2014), etc. His voice was recorded on several albums released by the ARC Music Production, the Nascente Records (UK), the Felmay Records (Italy), etc. His latest albums released by Felmay Records in 2011 and 2013 were reviewed by Songline, The Wire (UK), Trad, Les Inrocks (France), and All About Jazz (Italy), and many other renowned European magazines. The Folk World/ Deutsche Rezensionen replied to his 2011 Felmay album: “A beautiful album by a fantastic singer”. A notable British musical magazine Songlines placed its review to his 2013 Felmay album under the heading “top of the world.”

International reaction

Gochaq Askarov is only one of a handful of Azerbaijani Mugham artists to have established an international career, introducing to audiences around the world this great and unique art form.