“Karabakh or Death, no other Way!”: Hip Hop and War in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan

In post-Soviet Azerbaijan, hip hop is one of the main musical genres that articulates the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that escalated into two wars (1992-94; 2020). Creativity of hip hop artists is a prime example of intertextuality as they reference, quote, and remake texts of previous Azerbaijani hip hop songs, thus offering accounts of the way the conflict unfolded throughout history. Yet their creativity goes further than providing narratives: it becomes a powerful tool to promote nationalist imagery and inspire patriotism. In this paper, I rely on fieldwork in Azerbaijani during the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War, and analyse popular hip hop songs, focusing on discourses that arise as part of hip hop’s generic intertextuality. Specifically, I focus on the figure of the martyr that continuously reappears and foregrounds the topic of sacrifice, triggering affects at the core of mobilization and patriotism.