Jeffrey Werbock

Chairman

Mugham Society of America

NOTE: For more than 35 years, Jeffrey Werbock has used his knowledge of and ability to perform traditional Azerbaijani music on native instruments to present the country and people of Azerbaijan to the United States and other Western countries.  Below are his reflections about a career that has won him recognition as Baku’s musical ambassador to the world. 

In the early days of my earnest pursuit of the grand old musical traditions of Azerbaijan, I found myself sharing living quarters with my first teacher, an old oriental Jewish man from Derbend, Daghestan, Mr. Zevulon Avshalomov.  Besides my being utterly mesmerized by his playing style on kamancha, I found him to be a unique human being, and well worth taking the time to be near to him.  His sense of humor was superb, if different from the usual – I learned much later that his brand of mirth was typically “Kavkazi,” that is, Caucasian, if such a category of humor could be allowed.

 

My fascination with Mr. Avshalomov was not only regarding his personality.  He seemed to radiate a quality of presence that I could only find among those few who also came from this part of the world, and although my interest was experiential, not scholarly, I often wondered whether anyone had done any proper anthropological studies on the peoples of the Caucasus.  For such a strategically critical part of the world, it seemed that the amount of material on the subject was disproportionately spare and hard to come by.

Serious scholarship on the region and its peoples was beyond the scope of my activities in those early days beginning in 1972.  I read what was available, most notably The Sabres of Paradise by Lesley Blanch (1960).  The mystique of the Caucasus was a compelling force which led to many fascinating conversations with my elderly teacher.  Our teacher/student relationship, one very much like father and son or perhaps master and disciple, lasted until his death at the age of 77 in the year 1987.  But the main aim of my association with Mr. Avshalomov – learning his music – took on momentum and public presentations increased in frequency and the profile of the venues rose to some prominence.  

Four appearances at Merkin Hall by Lincoln Center, NYC, four at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, countless at the American Museum of Natural History, the World Music Institute, colleges, universities, community centers, and so on, all added up to some great exposure for the name of Azerbaijan among the cultural and intellectual elite of America and Europe.

 

All these experiences and more led me to take on the unofficial role of what is sometimes called second tier diplomacy, a position that can have significant reach that can be every bit as effective as official efforts to promote good relations between countries.  Thus, it seemed only natural that some instructors of Caucasus Studies at the US State Department's Foreign Service Institute (FSI), now known as the George P. Schultz Foreign Service Training Center in Arlington, Virginia, would invite me to share my insights into the socio-psychology and folkloric mind-set of the people of the Caucasus, with a particular emphasis on Azerbaijan.  Of course, there has to be music, not just talk, and I am always happy to comply with these requests.

The thrust of my message, usually to a class constituting the consolidation of the foreign service workers and diplomats to be assigned to the three Caucasian republics, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia, and the five Central Asian States of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan, is to encourage the future assignees to try to find some genuine interest in some aspect of the local culture, and not be shy to show their hosts that they are enthusiastic about that.

 

It appears to be a common complaint that Americans in general do not show enough interest in the rest of the world, but those who choose a career in foreign service should be the exception to this.  Undoubtedly, anyone attracted to the idea of being assigned to work in a foreign country would presumably have a greater than average interest in world affairs and possibly even the cultures of other peoples.  With this in mind, who could be a better, more receptive audience to the message such as the one contained in a presentation of music and other folkloric items from one of the least known and understood parts of the world, the Caucasus.

 

Thus, I see my main task in the presentations at FSI is to share my enthusiasm for the cultures and peoples of the Caucasus and to a certain extent Central Asia – I should mention that for several years, a number of musicians who performed with me in NYC venues were from Uzbekistan and who were able to play the Azerbaijani tar, a plucked skin faced fretted “lute” and the gaval, and a frame drum somewhat resembling a large tambourine but without the metal cymbals around the edge of the frame.  Thus I had some contact with members of that community and was a guest in their homes countless times.

And the message is that we do our best diplomacy when we find ourselves genuinely interested in some aspect of the culture of the host country.  Our tendency is to feel that just because we have the world's most powerful military and economy, and just because we are successfully exporting much of our culture and values, that our culture is therefore somehow superior.  In certain respects, we Americans do have much to offer the world, and that is not under examination here.  But there is much for us to delight upon that comes from other cultures, some of which are much more ancient than ours and have a richness that may not be evident upon first look, or listen.

 

One recent and excellent example of using culture for conducting second tier diplomacy took place in North Korea when the NY Philharmonic performed an orchestrated version of a popular Korean folk song.  Reported that the performance brought tears to the eyes of what had been up until that moment a sea of stony faced North Koreans, I read that the idea to do such a thing was suggested by someone from the State Department.  I would like to congratulate you, whoever you are, for not only thinking of this kind of soft diplomacy, but I imagine that it took a bit of lobbying, given the degree of commitment to learn and rehearse what is essentially a foreign musical genre, and for that you must have had a solid conviction in the power of music to bridge the wide gap that had opened between USA and North Korea.

Thankfully, there are no such yawning gaps to be closed between America and Azerbaijan, nevertheless the same principles of culture as an effective diplomatic tool can be implemented to bring these two great countries even closer.

Reference

Blanch, Lesley (1960). The Sabres of Paradise, Carroll & Graf Publishers.