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InternationalDaf BAMA music awards took place in Hamburg, Germany, one of these days. Singers Andre (The Best Armenian Male Act)and Sirusho(The Best Armenian Female Act)were representing Armenia.
During the awards ceremony, a remarkable incident occurred. Andre thanked his fans from Armenia and Artsakh, which did not slip the Azerbaijani singer AygunKazimova’sattention. She also decided to inappropriately thank Karabakh in her acceptance speech, while receiving an award in the Azerbaijani nomination, and it looked quite absurd.

Trying to hush the awkward situation up, the singer’s press-service decided to switch attention to another incident spreading in the Azerbaijani media misleading information, according to which, singer Sirushoallegedly had to perform “Sari Aghjik,” however, after Kazimova’s intervention, the organizers prohibited her to sing that song, and Sirusho performed her hit QeleQele from the Eurovision Song Contest.
Commenting on the situation in an interview with Panorama.am, Andre noted that the information is not true. “The song ‘Sari Aghjik’was performed on the sound check not by Sirusho, but by me, and the corresponding video is the proof . That is why, the information spread by the Azerbaijani singer’s press-service is directed exclusively to the internal public.”

The singer also ironically mentionedKazimova’s trick of thanking Karabakh. “People in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic have not even heard of her,” Andre noted.

“Sari Aghjik” is translated from Armenian as “Mountain girl.”Besides the fact that the offsprings of the Armenian Genocide survivals in France, the USA, Lithuania, Latin America, and even Australia have sang this song, it has used to be quite popular in Soviet Armenia as well.Many recordings, which were made from 1930s to 1970s, include those of SharaTalyan, Flora Khachatryan, PavelLisitsyan. In the same period, the song became popular in the Soviet Azerbaijan. Just like in the case of other Armenian songs, Azerbaijan considers “Sari Aghjik” its own “folk” song, that is why the reaction to the talks in Turkey about the Armenian roots of the song are quite painful.

More specifically, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey, Ahmet Davutoglu, being hosted in “Şeffaf Od” (“Transparent room”) television program on “Kanal D” in 2011, has approved that “Sari Aghjik” has an Armenian origin. Also, Baku has responded very negatively to the Armenian performance of this song by the popular Turkish singer SezenAksu, who was accompanied by an Armenian choir.In fact, Kurdish singer NilüferAkbal and well-known Turkish singer YavuzBingyol have also performed the song in Armenian.

The Turkish version takes its beginning from Armenian roots, too. It is a love story of a Turkish general and Armenian girl which had no future.