Early life and education

Ilhama Guliyeva was born on 17 August 1943 in Kurdakhany, Azerbaijani SSR. Her mother – Tukezban Ismayilova, was a popular Azerbaijani singer and khanende, and father – Mazahir Guliyev, worked as a prosecutor in Lankaran. Due to his job appointment, Ilhama Guliyeva spent her very early years in Shaki city of Azerbaijan. However, when Ilhama reaches the age of six, her parents divorce. Ilhama Guliyeva's mother, moving to Baku, marries a famous Azerbaijani tar player – Həbib Bayramov, who later becomes a supportive stepfather that actively engages in growing up and educating Ilhama Guliyeva.

At this early age, she gets enrolled in a 7-year musical school for piano training in Baku. As Guliyeva finishes both musical and high schools, with a great desire she wants to build her profession in the musical field. Nevertheless, young Ilhama faces definitive dissent from her parents. Taking into account the difficulties of music, they try to inspire her to master another art. Therefore, she enters the faculty of philology of the Azerbaijan State University in 1960 and continues non-musical studies in subsequent years. In 1964, Ilhama Guliyeva graduates from the university, but like every talented person with high musical intelligence, young Guliyeva could not get away from music.

Early musical career

In 1963, with the support of Ziniat Alizadeh, who was in close relations with Guliyeva's family, she starts performing at the university's "Sevinj" pop ensemble. As Guliyeva's parents still oppressed her passion for music, these musical activities were kept in secret from her family. In 1964, a competition of young talents from all over the world was held in Moscow. By the request of Mrs. Zinyat, Ilhama Guliyeva gets permission from her family and flies to Russia. Her family thought she was going to the festival as a spectator. Competing with young singers from many countries, Ilhama Guliyeva performs the songs of Rauf Hajiyev and Tofig Guliyev. As Guliyeva becomes the winner of the competition, she returns to Baku and gets invited to perform at the orchestra of the Azerbaijan State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (AzTV). Starting from 1965 until 1970, Ilhama Gulliyeva starts performing songs composed by Khayyam Mirzazade, Tofig Bakikhanov and Emin Sabitoglu in various genres of pop music, such as slow rock, jazz, R & B, soul and blues, as a soloist of the orchestra, headed by Tofiq Əhmədov.

1970s – 1980s

From 1970 until 1980, Ilhama Guliyeva performed at various stages as a soloist of the Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Hall. In 1972, "The Evening of Azerbaijani Composers" gets held in the House of the Unions in Moscow where Guliyeva performs several songs. After the concert, a prominent Azerbaijani composer Fikrat Amirov meets with Guliyeva and promises to compose art songs for her. Such songs as "Mən səni araram", "Göy Göl", "Gülür ellər gülür", "Gülərəm gülsən", "Toy mahnısı/Toydur bugün" and "De görüm neyləmişəm" became wonderful musical outputs of their cooperation, which went down in history of Azerbaijani music since then. Each of these songs is accompanied by folk instruments and orchestra, and has its own unique and colorful shades peculiar to Azerbaijani folk music. In the late 1970s, accompanied by the Musical ensemble "Dan Ulduzu", which was headed by Gulala Aliyeva, Ilhama Guliyeva performs many art songs of such outstanding Azerbaijani composers as Oqtay Kazımi, Oqtay Rəcəbov, Ramiz Mirişli, Arif Malikov, Ahmad Bakikhanov etc. Since then, Ilhama Guliyeva goes on tours to foreign countries (England, Spain, Denmark, Turkey, (Germany) etc.) and represents Azerbaijani music on the world stage.

1990s – 2000s

After the death of Habib Bayramov in 1994, Tükazban İsmayılova stopped performing and quit the musical stage. This heavily affects Ilhama Guliyeva, and she quits singing for a short period of time. After several years, Guliyeva starts to cooperate with an Azerbaijani composer Faiq Sücəddinov and performs such popular in Azerbaijan lyrical songs as "Neylərsən", "Kaman", "Bilsən necə darıxmışam" etc. In the beginning of the first decade of the 2000s, Guliyeva performed such songs as "Gedirəm", "Unut Məni", "Unuda bilməzsən" and "Yaşın nə fərqi var ki?/Love knows no age" which became appellative and the most popular song of Guliyeva's repertoire. This and other series of lyrical songs of Guliyeva contributed to transformation of Azerbaijani music. Since the beginning of the second decade of the 2000s, Guliyeva became the venerable elderly artist in the field of music in Azerbaijan, and young artists began making cover versions of art songs that she used to sing.

Socio-political activity

In the beginning of the 2000s, Ilhama Guliyeva publicly supports a new candidate for presidency – Ilham Aliyev. She gives concerts in the regions of Azerbaijan, runs her propaganda and makes a worthy contribution to Ilham Aliyev's successful election. Moreover, in 2002, Guliyeva receives the status of "International Cultural Executor" at the World Women's Congress in Beirut, the title of "The Art Queen of the Turkic World" in Turkey and four Humay Awards in Azerbaijan.^[1] Since 2003, together with a group of intelligent Azerbaijani women, Ilhama Guliyeva participated in several UN Geneva meetings and defended the rights of Azerbaijani women and children who had been affected by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In 2004, at various conferences, symposiums and protest rallies in Goteborg, Strasbourg, Paris, Istanbul and in front of the building of European Parliament in Brussels, Guliyeva had comprehensive public speeches on Armenian occupation of Azerbaijani internationally recognized territories. As the result of active socio-political participation, Guliyeva was elected as the president of the "Academy of Culture" under the World Congress of Azerbaijanis/Dünya Azərbaycanlıları Konqresi in 2004. In 2007, at the headquarters of the Universal Peace Federation in Washington DC, Guliyeva received the status of Goodwill Ambassador.

Ilhama Guliyeva receives "Yaxşıların Yaxşısı / Best of the Bests" Award, 2011.