Khan Shushinski

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Khan Shushinski
Khan Shushinski
Background information
Birth name	Isfandiyar Javanshir
Born	20 August 1901 Shusha, Elisabethpol Governorate (now part of Azerbaijan)
Died	18 March 1979 Baku, Azerbaijan
Genre(s)	Folk
Years active	1918 – 1979

Khan Shushinski (Azeri: Xan Şuşinski), born Isfandiyar Aslan oglu Javanshir (20 August 1901, Shusha – 18 March 1979, Baku), was an Azerbaijani khananda (folk singer).

[edit] Life

Despite Shushinski's relation to the khans of Karabakh, his stage name derives from an episode in his adolescence. In 1918, he and his mugham teacher Islam Abdullayev attended a wedding in the village of Novruzlu (presently in the Agdam rayon of Azerbaijan), where guests were listened to a gramophone record of the Iranian singer Abul Hasan Khan performing the Kurd Shahnaz variety of mugham. After the song, young Isfandiyar was emphatically asked to resing that song live. Despite the complicated nature of Kurd Shahnaz, his performance impressed the guests to the point of them comparing Isfandiyar to Abul Hasan Khan and saying: "Now, here's the real Khan."^[1]

Shushinski made his first appearance in Baku in 1923, at the Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Hall. He spent the next two decades touring cities of the South Caucasus, gaining huge popularity for his incredible voice and being often mentioned in the local media, as well as in the poem Azerbaijan by Samad Vurgun. In 1944, a year after he became People's Artist of Azerbaijan, he visited Tehran (along with four other cities in Iran) and was invited to perform at a banquet organized by Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.^[1]

Khan Shushinski became known as a talented composer after writing a number of songs, the most famous of them being Shushanin daghlari ("The Mountains of Shusha"), dedicated to his native city.^[1] He later taught vocal arts at the Zeynally College of Music in Baku.