Context and social function of Azerbaijan bayatis

Abstract

Studying the context of a text is extremely important. Studying context is one of the issues that world folklore studies have paid much attention to in recent times. Unfortunately, the context of the bayati, like other texts, has not been studied in Azerbaijani folklore studies so far. In folklore collections after the 2010s, efforts have been made to collect not only the texts but also their context. However, these collections have not been reflected in the research written so far. This is a very unfortunate situation. The function is directly related to the context of the text. The context of the text is one of the factors that determines its function. Therefore, when collecting and studying each text, it is necessary to make an effort to study its context.
The function of bayati is also one of the issues that has not been paid attention to in Azerbaijani folklore studies. Since the study of function depends on the context, it would be more correct to study them in a related way. When we look at folklore collections published until the 2010s, we see that the context of the vast majority of published bayatis is not given and the texts are in a “polished” state. Such published bayatis cannot provide the information necessary for research. It is impossible to determine their function by looking at these texts. However, bayati has many functions, and the context determines which function it carries. In this article, we intend to draw attention to several of the functions of bayati.
Until now, the social function of the bayati, like other functions, has not been studied. Studying the social function of the bayati can shed light on a number of issues related to this genre. This function is most often found in mourning ceremonies. Since sufficient material was not collected at the time to investigate this function, we have attempted to study the social function of bayati through questions we addressed to the narrators during folklore collections, as well as based on the information they provided as appropriate. In fact, the ceremony itself also carries a social function, and the texts said there also make this function clearly felt.