NTS aired an episode dedicated to the music of Vagif Mustafa Zadeh on 4 May 2020. Vagif Mustafa Zadeh has been played on NTS shows including Zel Zele w/ Debora Ipekel & Ece Duzgit, with Mugham first played on 2 March 2019.

Vagif Mustafa Zadeh was an Azeri jazz pianist and composer, famous for fusing jazz and traditional Azeri folk music known as mugham. (His daughter Aziza Mustafa Zadeh now follows in his footsteps as a pianist, composer and singer in the jazz-mugam style.) He was born March 16, 1940 in Azerbaijan, Soviet Union and died of a heart-attack after a concert on December 17, 1979 in Tashkent, shortly before the birthdays of his wife Eliza (December 17) and daughter (December 19).

Vagif attended Baku State Musical Technical School, from which he graduated in 1963. By the early 1960s he had started to gain a reputation even outside of Azerbaijan as a great jazz musician. In 1966, Willis Conover, conductor of the "Jazz Time" radio program, even went as far as to say, "Vagif Mustafa Zadeh is an extraordinary pianist. It is impossible to identify his equal. He is the most lyrical pianist I have ever known."

He won first prize at the 8th International Music Festival for his performance of "Waiting for Aziza" in Monaco in 1978, but died the next year.

He is also referred to as Vagif Mustafazade or Vagif Mustafa-zade.