"Karabakh or Death, no Other Way!": Hip Hop and War in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan

Abstract

In post-Soviet Azerbaijan, hip hop is the main musical genre that articulates the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that escalated into two wars (1992-94; 2020). The creativity of hip hop artists is a prime example of intertextuality as they reference, quote, and remake texts of previous Azerbaijani hip hop songs, thus offering accounts of the way the conflict unfolded throughout history. Yet their creativity goes further than providing narratives: it becomes a powerful tool to promote nationalist imagery and inspire patriotism. In this paper, I rely on interviews and first-hand experience while doing fieldwork in Azerbaijan when the Second Karabakh War erupted, and analyze popular hip hop songs, focusing on discourses that arise as part of hip hop’s generic intertextuality. Specifically, I focus on the figure of the martyr that continuously reappears to accentuate the topic of sacrifice and to trigger affects at the core of mobilization and patriotism.