[vocal music in Azerbaijani language]
[vocal music continues in background] (male voice begins offscreen) Layla and Majnun, throughout the
Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, everybody knows this story. It's part of
the culture. The character is actually named Qais, Layla and Qais, but because
he's so … he's driven mad by his love for Layla from childhood, he's labeled crazy,
love-crazed Majnun. That's a term that's used all over the world, the Muslim world
specifically, to mean someone who's out of his mind in love. About a decade ago (um), I
was asked by Mr. Yo-Yo Ma, the renowned cellist and founder of the Silk Road
Ensemble, to come and listen to a concert that they were working on with the very,
very great Azerbaijani singer, Alim Qasimov. Very, very famous in a
style of singing that's sort of all over
the Central Steppes called mugham, [Alim Qasimov singing in Azerbaijani] It's a
very, very passionate, very strictly controlled improvisational form of
traditional music. [instrumental background music begins and plays from this point on] Mr.Qasimov and Mr.
Ma met to try and find a way to bring Laila and Majnun to a larger audience
by making it shorter. It's just with two singers, Alim and his daughter, Fargana,
who's a very, very great singer in her own right. And Yo-Yo said, “We would
love to turn this into a presentation, a stage show, with dancing and production
values.” And my first meeting was, “Thank you so much. The concert was great. I am
the right person to do this, but I'm not going to;
I'm not interested.” So, over a few years they worked on it to become a very
concise one-hour sequence. And it turned out that I loved it.
[continued background music] The poetry, which I read first of all, led
[emphasized] me to look at incredible Mughal and Persian miniature paintings. There are
many that are very, very great scenes from their lives. I actually read the
poems every time we have a rehearsal.
Howard Hodgkin, the very, very great English painter. We've been friends for
20 years maybe. He has collected miniature paintings, Mughal mostly, for
many, many years. When he sells a painting of his, he buys a miniature painting from
the 16th century. He's designed backdrops for me several times. He's designing the
set and the costumes for this. He has a very, very deep, profound
understanding of the area.
There has been great, important, classical, beautiful music all over the world for
endless centuries. In the way that music is international, it [emphasized] can be if everybody
opens a few filters. I'm not an overtly political artist; I very often think that
doesn't work, but I made the conscious decision to do this piece. Not just
because of the very, very distressing and strange politics and (ah) Islamophobia (um) that's
prevalent, but also just because it's such beautiful, profound, moving music and
wouldn't suffer from staging and choreography. It would actually enhance
it and make it more comprehensible for a non-Azerbaijani audience to get the
message of it, which is a message, of course, of profound, abundant, eternal love.
[continued background music]