Ashugh Nahapet Kouchak and his Songs

Abstract

Nahapet Kouchak created songs in ashugh style in Armenian and Armenian-Persian, Turkish as ‘’dapull, ama, varsagh, tejnis, divani, dyubeit, as well as some other ashugh songs, metrics of which is quite different and have nothing to do with iambic-anapestic metrics of gousan-folk hayrens(the Natives). It should be mentioned that Ashugh Kouchak left his name at the end of his songs, whereas in no manuscript Kouchak was mentioned as an author of individual hayren. The language of hayrens is Middle Armenian, whereas the language of Kouchak’s songs known to us is mixed-Arabic Armenian, Persian and Turkish. It is known that Kouchak cured the Sultan’s wife owing to his song. No doubt that Nahapet’s song was in Turkish, the same is for his ashugh songs. Thus, Nahapet Kouchak was one of the first ashugh-singers, a unique ashugh, who didn’t have anything to do with the hayren vocal art.

Thus, 29 songs by Ashugh Kouchak are written in ashugh style. 11 of them are Armenian songs, 1 written in Armenian- Persian and 17-in Turkish. The latter was the main language of ashughs at that time. As to Kouchak’s grandson’s literary heritage, it should be stated that we haven’t known anything about it so far.

Thus, Kouchak of Van, the Patriarch of Armenian ashughs, is the first trilingual ashugh, owing to whom later Sayat-Nova also created in three languages.