Country: Azerbaijan

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Duo ″Ya Tosiba″ – vocalist Zuzu Zakaria and electronics whizz Tatu Mosak (source: YouTube)

Album review

″Love Party″ by Ya Tosiba: Sufi in the house

A wonderfully subversive and witty album, Ya Tosiba′s ″Love Party″ slyly pokes fun at authority and present day life in Azerbaijan. With electronics simulating traditional instruments from the region, it draws on the Sufi ′meyknana′ tradition for its lyrics. Review by Richard Marcus More

Interview with Michael Dreyer of the Osnabruck Morgenland Festival: A hub connecting the Orient and the OccidentThe 13th Sufi Soul Festival: The musical path to AllahQantara dossier: Musical worlds
Arab tourists in Baku, Azerbaijan (photo: azvision.az)

Azerbaijan′s enlightenment

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A nation at odds with itself

As the first Muslim country to grant women the vote in 1919, Azerbaijan is rightly proud of its enlightened heritage. Yet increasingly, tensions are arising between an evolving 21st century ″anything goes″ interpretation of religious tolerance and the secular legacy of its literary founding fathers. An essay by Nermin Kamal More

Muslims and Jews in Azerbaijan: Intercultural dialogue in the South CaucasusVeit Helmer's Absurdistan: Lysistrata in AzerbaijanPolitics and oil in Azerbaijan: The magic of numbers
Shia Muslims protest in Pakistan following a terrorist attack in Lahore on 22 January 2014 which killed 24 Shia pilgrims (photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Sunni-Shia tension

Islam versus Islam

The religious element of the conflicts raging in the Middle East today is a major reason why they are proving so difficult to defuse. An essay by Shahid Javed BurkiMore

Iran-Saudi conflict: The Middle East′s Cold WarIran-Saudi conflict: Playing the sectarian cardQantara dossier: Sunni-Shia tension
Dhafer Youssef Band performing at the Morgenland Festival in Osnabruck on 21 September 2014 (photo: Morgenland Festival Osnabruck)

Interview with Michael Dreyer of the Osnabruck Morgenland Festival

A hub connecting the Orient and the Occident

The Osnabruck Morgenland Festival has acquired a reputation for top-class Oriental music. Marian Brehmer spoke to the festival's founder, Michael Dreyer, about the challenges of organising the annual festival, and how un-political a festival of the Orient can beMore

Website of the Morgenland Festival OsnabruckInterview with Kinan Azmeh and Dima Orsho: "All we can do is sing and play our hearts out"Oriental Music Festival in Germany: The silenced sounds of BaghdadInterview with the Kurdish singer Aynur Dogan: Resisting the wind
Performance of Marc Sinan's "Dede Korkut" (photo: Thomas Aurin)

Interview with the composer Marc Sinan

A modern-day Bartók of Turkic music

Dede Korkut, the best-known of the epic stories of the Oghuz Turks, and the music that goes with it form the basis of Marc Sinan's new docu-fictional musical theatre production, "Dede Korkut – The Story of Tepegoz". Astrid Kaminski spoke to the composerMore

Islam in European Classical Music: As-salam alaykum Resounding from the MinaretThe Borusan Istanbul Philharmonic Orchestra: The Orient in the Mirror of Western CompositionsQantara dossier: Musical Worlds
A Persian "Haft Sin" table featuring seven foods and objects all beginning with the letter "s" (photo: Imago/UPI Photo)

Nowruz: one of the world's oldest festivals

"My paleness is yours, your colour is mine!"

The Iranian New Year celebration "Nowruz" has been a feature of Persian culture for more than 2,500 years. The roots of this festival lie in the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism. Today, more than 300 million people all over the world celebrate Nowruz. Shohreh Karimian looks back at the history of this new year celebration and explains some of its customsMore

Photo gallery: NowruzIranian musician Shahram Nazeri: The Persian nightingale and the flowers of hopeIran and the Legacy of the Persians: Persepolis: A Political Compass

In brief

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Most Recent Photo Essay

Part of the community: Sabriye Sinaic and her family work as farmers and labourers in their village and the surrounding area. She doesn′t know about her ancestry, but believes they came to Turkey from Damascus, Syria. Until the establishment of the Afro-Turk association she said, "I didn′t know there were others like us, then I saw there are many spread around"

Turkey′s African roots

They are descendants of Africans brought to the Ottoman Empire as slaves and domestic workers and said to number up to 100,000. Bradley Secker spent time with those identifying as Afro-Turks in western Turkey.