In cities, towns, and villages throughout Iranian Azerbaijan ˓āshiqs (professional poet-musicians) entertain audiences in coffee houses and at weddings. ˓Āshiqs compose and perform songs in a variety of poetic forms. The longest of these forms is the oral narrative poem called the dāstān in the Azeri dialect of Turkish. In his presentation of these tales, the ˓āshiq observes a standard protocol, yet within this established format, he has room to improvise, to stretch some segments of his entertainment or to cut other parts short. It is this flexibility within the framework of an established presentation format that keeps these oral narrative poems from growing stale in the mind of the performer and in the perception of the audience.
This paper will briefly describe the ˓āshiq, his training and performance. Then, one segment of a dāstān will be analyzed to show what its components are, and how they can be manipulated by the performer.
