"Azerbaijani folk-songs and songs of minority people living in the republic". Baku, 2011.

Under present-day conditions the traditional spiritual culture of the people serves as a means of national self-identification, as life-giving soil for the harmonious development and education of human beings. In this context, its preservation, restoration, enrichment and understanding are extremely important.

The globalization and integrative processes occurring today in the global space of social reality leads to the fact that people sometimes lose patience, forfeiting their own historical and cultural roots. It is not necessary to delve into details of the problems of globalization and anti-globalization studies to realize the following: sustainable development of our civilization is possible only in conditions of cultural diversity.

The modern democratic Azerbaijan geographically located at the frontiers of European and Asian continents is at the crossroads of different civilizations from the viewpoint the historical past - Aheminido-Sasanian-Seljuk, Roman-Byzantine, Scythian-Khazar, Turkic-Oguz. The phenomenon of prosperity of Azerbaijan is founded in the ethnogenesis of its people - the creator of unique values in various fields of artistic creation with all the mosaic and multi-color kaleidoscopic cultural strata, sunk into the historical monuments of material and spiritual documentation.

However if you retrace the history of the Azerbaijani ethnos, you will see that except for the Azerbaijanis, constituting about 90% of the country total population, various minority peoples, ethnic and national groups were involved in formation and establishment of this ethnic group for centuries. Among them you can see representatives of the Turkic branch of Altaic family - Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Meskhetian Turks, the Indo-European language group - Tats, Talysh, Mountain Jews, Kurds; the Caucasian language group - Udi, Lezgins, Avars, Tsakhurs, buzugtsy, ingiloy, gryz and khinalig: the Slavic languages group - Russian, Molokans, Ukrainians and others.

The modern Azerbaijan is a multi-ethnic state and one of the main tasks of a balanced policy of political guidance of the republic is to preserve the multi-ethnic array of state – the determinant of the cultural gene pool of the country, including such elements as the language of ethnic culture, folk art, material culture of the people, customs and traditions, ethics and the traditional system of education and so on.

The "ethnic renaissance" in Azerbaijan began in its own way with the famous Edict of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev, published in 1993. The decree clearly identified ethnic minority rights in education, printing, special broadcasts on national television and radio, the equality and partnership, solidarity and justice, tolerance and honesty. The successful implementation of this decree has led to the fact that the today's consciousness of the new national of Azerbaijan consists of unity of three components: the right of belonging to their ethnic group (whether it be Azerbaijanis, Tatars, Talysh, Russian, etc.), love and respect for their national traditions and history of his people, aspiration for study of the national language and national culture, the right of belonging to a multi-ethnic Azerbaijani society and, finally, the right of belonging to the world community, a sense of responsibility not only for the fate of its people and its multi-ethnic country, but around the world. It is likely that there is no people who wouldn't be faced with a problem of preservation and development of their ethnic culture. As is well known the overall intent joins together.

Our main task is to be enriched with new knowledge, to preserve the nation and its culture, providing for the future preservation of the knowledge accumulated by previous generations, etc. The varied and colorful folk music of the peoples of Azerbaijan is a rich spiritual heritage, which throw back into centuries and millennia.

The musical folkloristics has extensive experience of studying the primordial folklore as a science, based in Azerbaijan by the great Uzeyir Hajibeyli. However, active and purposeful work on collecting, studying and broad dissemination of musical folklore of ethnic minorities of the republic began only in recent years.

The proposed book "Azerbaijani folk-songs and songs of minority people living in the republic" is one of the tag products fulfilled in field conditions in various regions of the republic within summer of 2011 by the teaching staff of Baku Musical Academy named after U.Hajibayli and the creative team of the magazine "Music World" at the head of the professor Tariyel Mammadov aiming at collecting, systematization, widely dissemination and audio recording of the song folklore of people living in the republic.

Despite the fact that the representative part of the whole society of the republic consists of Azerbaijanis, it is populated by more than 30 titular nationalities and ethnic groups. In this project they are represented by several ethnic groups (total 16). However, the proposed collection, encompassing the most striking and characteristic folk-song melodies reflects adequately the ethnic diversity of the genre of folk music, existing in Azerbaijan.

The authentic folklore of the peoples, compactly living in various rural regions – the ceremonial, calendar, employment, drinking etc has been emphasized particularly. In addition, some attention paid to the characteristics of existence or renewal of the traditional folk heritage in a modern urban environment. In general, we have to note the following: the project aims at solving civil, environmental, educational, social, educational, cultural, historical, ethnographic and scientific problems associated with the collection, preservation and transmission of multimedia electronic communication of unique designs - artifacts of folk music Azerbaijan succeeding generation of mankind.

The proposed electronic edition:

- Expands knowledge about the infrastructure of the traditional musical culture of Azerbaijan;

- Attaches the people living in different parts of the world community to the musical landscape of ethnic Azerbaijani;

- Promotes the liberal education and self-instruction of intellectuals and students;

- memorializes the traditional music of Azerbaijan;

- Raises concern about the conservation of natural and cultural values among the local population and tourists;

- Retains the traditional musical culture in the areas of their existence - developing methods and techniques of management and monitoring of ecotourism;

- Establishes the copyrights of the people of Azerbaijan to the age-old traditional musical culture.

The project is guided by international instruments on human rights and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities; takes into account the value of the intangible cultural heritage as an accumulative of cultural diversity and ensure sustainable development that is embedded in the position of an international convention, adopted in 32-th session of UNESCO (2003); takes into account that the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) initiated a new direction in 1998in the field of intellectual property - the problem of protection of traditional knowledge; recognizes the Constitution of the Azerbaijan Republic, the laws of Azerbaijan Republic Law "On Copyright and Related Rights" and "Legal Protection of Expressions of Folklore" .

The compiling and publishing of an electronic publication dedicated to the ethno-musical culture of Azerbaijan have been attended by: the Ministry of Education of Azerbaijan Republic, Baku Music Academy named after U.Hajibayli, district and municipal departments of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic, the Association of minority peoples living in the territory of Azerbaijan, the creative team of the music magazine "Music World".

Hereby we would like to express feelings of sincere gratitude and appreciation to all project participants, first of all to the folk musicians, keepers of ethnic musical memory, holders of traditional folklore of Azerbaijan, as well as residents of regions, cities and rural areas of the country.

Professor, Tariyel MƏMMƏDOV