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Saturday 11 September 2010

Yerevan - Baku taxi experiment: listening to the ‘enemy’ music

Good experiment. [This film was made as part of the project by the Eurasia Partnership Foundation supported by the British embassy in Yerevan.]



I can’t say that opinions expressed from both sides were surprising. They were mainly based on cliches and due to the lack of direct communication between Azeris and Armenians following Karabakh war. That’s the reason why social networks, blogs or offline meetings are so important, although they could be used for inciting hatred too.

However, I was mostly interested in taxi passengers’ reaction to playing Armenian music in Baku, and Azeri music in Yerevan. And it was not balanced in that there were more opinions recorded from the Armenian side than from Azeri side. I’d be interested to hear more reaction from Baku residents too. And in general, I’d like to see this music part of the experiment expanded. Would be also interesting to repeat the experiment on different settings. For example, the reaction of exchanging respective cuisine set in Yerevan and Baku restaurants etc.

4 comments:

Onnik Krikorian said...

Thanks for the post. Hoping other Armenian and Azerbaijani bloggers will comment in their own posts too. There'll be round up of reaction on Global Voices on Monday.

Onnik Krikorian said...

Global Voices would like to thank Mika Artyan, Liana Aghajanian, Yelena Osipova, Arzu Geybullayeva and Aygun Janmammadova for taking the time to post their responses to the Eurasia Partnership Foundation video specially for this entry.

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2010/09/13/armenia-azerbaijan-backseat-musical-musings-and-ethnic-conflict/

artmika said...

Onnik, thanks for the initiative and great coverage.

Yesterday with a group of Armenian friends in London we were discussing this video. They all liked the experiment and want to see more of similar projects.

Anonymous said...

There was nothing new discovered through this 'experiment'.
An 'experiment' supposes a discovery of something new.
What was the outcome of this 'experiment'?
We found out that we don't like each other?