Meykhana
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Meykhana (Azeri: meyxana) is a kind of traditional Azeri distinctive folk unaccompanied song, usually performed by several people improvising on a particular subject. Meykhana originally meaned a kind of potatory house, where some alcoholic beverages called mey have been served. The contests, carried out in such places, involved two or more poets exchanging verses back and forth in an extemporaneous fashion, sometimes joking and disparaging one another. At the end of the contest, the audience determined which poet had improvised the most elegant and clever verses and declared him the winner. The most known type of meykhana is dəyişmə, where some phrase or distich called qafiyə is taken and the following couplets are being fitted to it.
Meykhana was performed among the youth of Baku settlements in the pre-Revolutionary time however during the Soviet period meykhana was considered to be banned. Modern famous performers include Agaselim Childag, Namiq Garachukhurlu and Vugar Abdulov. In the 90's meykhana was mixed with rap and produced Azeri hip hop.
