10.1 - Contributors

Spring (11.1)

Contributors

Ronnie Gallagher, BP's Environmental Manager in Baku, spends much of his spare time exploring the Azerbaijani countryside, searching for evidence of ancient civilization. His efforts have uncovered some remarkable discoveries, including numerous ancient burial chambers and peculiar patterns of grooves and cup holes carved right into the rock. Along with colleague and fellow explorer Abbas Islamov, Gallagher hopes to begin to document and draw attention to this evidence of Early Man and help protect them from being inadvertently destroyed. Page 40.

Gazanfar Pashayev has written 10 books related to Iraq's Turkoman minority-or Karkuk-as they are known in Azeri. The Turkoman are very closely related to Azerbaijanis and speak virtually the same language. Pashayev lived in Iraq from 1962 to 1966 and again from 1972 to 1975. His collection of Karkuk-related material is now on display at Baku's Nizami Literature Museum in their permanent collection. For this issue, he helped us put a face to one of the major ethnic groups in Iraq which are primarily located near the Kirkuk oil fields which are currently under bombardment by U.S.-led forces. Page 22.

Jay Hovdey has been writing about Thoroughbred horses since the 1970s. That's the reason he knows so much about the current season's forefront winner named "Azeri", which was just honored as the North American "Horse of the Year" for being the best race horse for 2002. A Southern California native, Jay holds the title of Executive Columnist for the Daily Racing Form, America's leading journal of Thoroughbred racing. He is married to Julie Krone, the Hall of Fame jockey and former ESPN Female Athlete of the Year. Page 15.

Alla Bayramova, Director of the State Museum of Azerbaijani Musical Culture, has been hard at work publicizing unknown works by famous Azerbaijani composers. By sifting through composers' archives at the Museum and organizing premiere performances of works by Niyazi and Gara Garayev, Bayramova is bringing forgotten, unpublished pieces to life once again, nearly 20 years after the composers' deaths. Page 16.

AI Editorial Assistant Aynura Huseinova has diligently worked behind the scenes to make this issue a reality. She was also involved with translating Azeri proverbs in the Turkoman article and in fleshing out "Sociolinguistically Speaking" with examples of children's lore. Aynura is interning in Los Angeles where she serves as Webmaster for Azerbaijan International's four Web sites: AZER.com (magazine archives), AZgallery.org ( showcase of 3,000 works by Azerbaijani artists), AZERI.org (Azeri language and literature, much of it in English translation) and HAJIBEYOV.com (music of Uzeyir Hajibeyov). Page 24 and 27.