August 18, 2007
For years attempts have been made to isolate Iran, politically and socially from the global community. Weather its economic sanctions imposed by outside powers, or cultural and economic protectionism imposed from within, we see this isolation in many aspects of Iranian life. From within Iranian society, however, there has been a movement to transcend this isolation; from Khatami’s “Dialog amongst civilizations” to the two Iranian students, “bikers for peace”, who rode their bicycles around the world to show that Iranians desire peace and cooperation. Similarly, within the Iranian art scene a movement has flourished to promote mutual cultural understanding, and deconstruct the stagnant East-to-West binary. Christophe Rezai’s Nour ensemble is an attempt to do just this.
The Nour ensemble held the Vahdat Hall in Tehran for three nights from July 19th to the 21st. As I walked into Vahdat Hall on the eve of their last performance, I didn’t know what to really expect. I had listened to their album Alba the night before over and over, but it’s always more personal and revealing to witness music live. The performance consisted of a ten song repertoire from the album, combining Spanish Conductus (medieval sacred vocals), Gregorian Chants, Iranian and Kurdish avaz. The instrumentation was mostly Iranian with the addition of the duduk, an Armenian wind instrument, and the Afghani harmonium. For Rezai, what helps bridge Iranian melody with the Cantigas de Santa Maria is that, to some extent, medieval European music is influenced by Arabic musical traditions.
This Arabic influence was evident and very much in tact at the concert’s start with the song Santa Maria Amar. With Nour’s nine members on stage and the audience waiting in anticipation, Saba Alizadeh breaks the silence with three plucks of his kamanche, each emphasized with a long rest in between them. His utilization of ’silence’ as a key element in his solo is a quintessential Iranian motif. However, as the kamanche fell into a steady drone the oud solo rose to the foreground an Arabic atmosphere known as a taqsim was created. Their use of a taqsim in maqam-e Bayatti is very different from the Persian Radiff’s daramad in dastgah-e Shur, that the listener might expect. This ambient drone was a staple of Nour’s repertoire and found several manifestations throughout the night.
In the second song, Novus Annus, the harmony created by the choir often clashed with the microtonal scales of the Kurdish avaz. The melding of medieval European choir music with Mid-Eastern microtonal melodies was already attempted in Turkish Anatolia during the first half of the 19th century. Back then this experiment was met with mixed results due to a simple failure to achieve aesthetic appeal. That night at Vahdat Hall it was unclear whether Nour was able to consistently transcend this aesthetic challenge.
However, after the intermission in the song Uterus, the harmony created by the choir worked quite well with the Kurdish avaz solo, primarily due to the lack of microtones in dastgah-e Mahour. In fact this piece began with a beautiful solo on Ali Bustan’s shurangiz, sounding essentially more Persian. The most technical piece and best incorporation of the Radiff occurred in, Cunctissimus Concanentes, where dastgah-e Nava was clearly detectable amongst the harmonic background of the choir. But again in A que as cousas, a hybrid between the microtonal mode of dastgah-e Afshari and choir harmonies, a collision occurred between musical structures. Does this serve the mission of cross cultural understanding if it doesn’t appeal aesthetically?
In Kayhan Kalhor’s Ghazal you can hear the Radiff sometimes dancing and sometimes wrestling with the Indian Ragas, bringing both harmony and tension. But that night at the Vahdat Hall, the Radiff’s framework often clashed with the framework of the Gregorian chants or Conductus, and failed to either woo or stimulate the listener. When I heard dastgah-e Nava or Afshari being performed in this context I got an image of a wild horse being tamed. The element of wild suspense and risk were missing from the music, leaving only a very controlled Western atmosphere.
Despite these shortcomings the concert did have magical moments. The audience reacted with great pleasure to the encore, Villancico, where the Persian 6/8 rhythm and Mahour melody meshed perfectly with the medieval eastern European choir. The most uplifting part of the concert was in this last piece, where smiles were stretched across the musicians’ and the audiences’ faces.
Fusions can reflect different types of struggles and synchronizations, such as between the many identities of a widely scattered Iranian Diaspora, or between alien cultures and languages or simply between radically different styles of art. Many Ostads in New Delhi frustratingly struggle to maintain their modal system of Ragas untouched, or at least melodically visible. The same can be said of the many Ostads in Tehran who struggle to maintain the Radiff untouched. But in the past decade or so, Persian classical music has experienced a growth in fusion. Experimentation with a wide array of musical cultures has often built legitimate crossroads between various cultural styles and genres. The question that needs to be addressed here is what makes a musical experiment worth while?
In Iran artists such as Hossein Alizadeh, Masoud Shaari and Kayhan Kalhor have pioneered the way for successful fusion mixes with PCM. What these artists have in common is a willingness to take risks, a virtuoso talent and a knack for finding the harmony between the genres they fuse. The audience of Vahdat Hall that night, however, were treated to a far more controlled, reserved and isolated attempt at fusion. Nonetheless, it was a brave and beautiful performance which will probably be the beginning of a very new and beautiful attempt at building bridges.
May 28, 2007
A review of Masoud Shaari’s latest work: In the Shade of the Wind
Since the turn of the 19th century, intellectual movements in Iranian art have involved an experience with modernism, which most scholars would argue began in the European Renaissance and therefore is uniquely a Western philosophical phenomenon. This East-to-West
relationship with modernism has left many of these Iranian artistic intellectual movements in a state of emulating the Western experience. Historical figures such as Mohammad Ali Furughi, Sadegh Hedayat, Nima Yushij, Bozorg Alavi, and Hassan Taghizadeh lead these movements in various art forms of society; some succeeded in establishing new genres, while others found themselves in a cycle of Western thematic replication. The Iranian experience and development of modernity led to a unique style of music, painting, and cinema. A critical import from modernity to Iranian art-culture is one of modernity’s main pillars: self criticism. To take the entire structure of one’s tradition under scrutiny allows for revolution to take place, in turn creating new genres and styles. Essentially a revolution is taking place right before our eyes today, creating possibly for the first time ever a new genre in Persian classical music. In Iran, artists have begun to openly question the restrictions and constraints of their musical tradition (Radiff). This culture of self criticism has lead to the creation of new forms and genres in Western art, and now a handful of artists in Tehran are rupturing in the same process of self reflection.
In the year 1127, the artist Abbot Suger began reconstructing his Abbey Basilica of St. Denis in Paris. Suger’s architectural ideas resulted in something never seen before, a “new look” neither classically Greek nor Roman or Romanesque. Eventually Suger’s pioneer work led to an influential architectural style known as “gothic.” Not knowing what to call Suger’s work at the time, the society relied on a Latin name, “opus modernum.” Today in the 21st century, in the context of Iranian society, Masoud Shaari’s interpretation of the ancient Persian Radiff allows for an “opus modernum” manifestation to occur in Persian classical music. His ground breaking work, In the Shade of the Wind, intertwines the ancient with the modern age, marrying instruments such as the setar to the electric guitar, the ney to the saxophone. Each of the four tracks in this album are journeys to distant lands, where one can imagine Persian merchants offering the world their melodies and rhythms in exchange for nothing else but a sense of mutual understanding.
Shaari has unlocked the dusty box of the Radiff, letting ancient Iranian melodies play catch with the world. In 1978, the band Ancient Future was the first ever to coin the term “world fusion music,” defining their new style. Shaari’s album In the Shade of the Wind can fall under this category of music as well, where many cultures and sub-cultural musical styles are audibly interacting: classical North Hindustani rhythms and ragas are incorporated, 1950’s American pop-rock comes in and out of improvisatory segments, American Blue-Grass Country guitar is surprising to hear at times, jazz chord progressions harmonize in the background of a massive setar chorus, and psychedelic trance movements create an atmosphere close to that of the Sufi “Sama” ecstasy. Many of the trance-like sections in Shaari’s music is seriously influenced by the repetitiveness of Indian music and rock music. Through this conglomeration of musical styles and the process of fusion, Shaari unknowingly creates a new musical language – a global one! This new musical language is purposely, however, deeply rooted in a Persian accent. The Radiff still holds centerfold piece amidst the chaos of this fusion, exhibiting to the Western world an “untouched”, and “pure” melodic sentimentality of ancient tradition. To Iranians, Masoud Shaari re-energizes the setar, revamping a tradition to adapt and still remain capable and applicable in the 21st century. The new generation of post-modern intellectuals is a movement towards globalization, and in Iran we are beginning to see this global influence in their music.
It must also be mentioned that other artists in Tehran are exhibiting the same ideological tendencies that Shaari has manifested in his music, although stylistically completely different. Other artists, namely Mohsen Namjoo, have remained loyal to the emotional spirit inside the Radiff, while creatively being able to uplift their Iranian musical heritage with a whole new approach to creating melodies, an approach which shatters away arbitrary borders and boundaries. In the case of In the Shade of the Wind, Shaari bears the weight of his artistic creation on developing the mastery of the Iranian Setar. For example, in track one, Hamsaz, one can not only hear but feel the many different new techniques Shaari has incorporated in his style of playing. Besides technique, his melody in dastgah-e Nava still abides by bare structural laws of the Radiff, but the actual melody is something unheard of. This compromise between abiding by the structure of the Radiff but not the Radiff melodies set’s Shaari completely free in the creating process of melody, and distinguishes his musicianship from other fusion artists.
Nevertheless, this compromise isn’t always enough to keep the traditionalist music critics at ease. The heated tug-a-war debate between traditionalists and non-traditionalists in Persian classical music has created a frenzy of opinions. Traditionalists frown upon the concept of exploratory music, because they fear that the essence of the Radiff will become lost in the scientific laboratory of fusion based music. On the other side of the spectrum the non-traditionalists believe that, according to Masoud Shaari himself, “It is our duty to show to the world what we have been cherishing for so long, not to hide our musical heritage, especially in a world that is becoming increasingly smaller day by day.” When I asked why this is our duty, the answer was clear as sunshine, “…because assimilation brings understanding and comprehension.” Masoud Shaari believes his music doesn’t see boundaries. In fact it can be said that his music purposely breaks them.
In the Shade of the Wind employs jump-cut sectionalization, combining characteristics from different genres in musical form. At times it tends to be self reflective and ironic, blurring boundaries between many styles and “high brow” art. As a musical condition, Shaari’s approach with regard to foreign musical identities doesn’t only bring about change in the Radiff, rather the actual merging forces change to occur inside all foreign elements in his music. After speaking with the guitarist, Arash Mitooei, it became clear that the guitar had to adapt just as much as the setar had to.
In every society an individual comes along who breaks the constricting factors of their tradition, introducing the unknown. Masoud Shaari has earnestly sought the underlying principles of “exotic” music by years of study and performance in that idiom. His thorough understanding of the “other” has helped him as a composer to subtly incorporate the different themes together, so subtle infact that one may not imagine the source of the foreign elements. This intellectual movement in Tehran’s music scene seems to have just begun, and many more artists are sure to follow the footsteps of these progressive musicians.
March 22, 2007
It’s spring time in Tehran–Apple trees in the gardens have blossomed, while baby Narges flowers grow near streams, intoxicating paired lovers on a stroll through the park. On the 13th day of spring the parks are filled with families, all interacting and interwoven to form a massive extended family. Women sit together as sisters, tieing knotts together in the grass. With every knott tied a prayer for health and happiness is blessed for their children in the coming new year. Children run to the streams releasing their goldfish, atleast those that have survived the 13 day exile on the “haft-sin”. Yes, Tehran laughs and giggles in the wake of spring.
It’s spring time in Esfahan–Walking across a Life Giving River, the Zayande Rud, a bridge transports me back in time. To a place where merchants and travellers bargain, to a place where kings and queens used to dine. The ancient breeze of the poetic river awakens and beakons, breathing into the world a sense of tradition. The river currents ripple the mirror-esque surface and my face, through nostalgic stained stone archways. The 33 arched bridge (seyo-se pol) and the many other aging bridges sit on the water as if they were always there from the begining of the river’s birth. I witness a celebration of water and bridges.
Happy New Years!
Love,
Fared Shafinury
March 12, 2007
An old man and his young son would traverse the streets in the late evening, trodding slowly down rich streets where families usually dine extravagently every night of the week. The father would point the scroll of his violin towards the urban grease stained ground, as if purposely hunching his back to not look anyone in the eye. Instead he was viewing the world through the eyes of his malnutritioned son. Hasan, who obediently drummed away on the tombak, would look everyone in the eye with gloom and glare. Standing at the corner of Mahyar and Vali-Asr, I took the innitive to approach this tragic duo with compassion, and my deep appreciation of music. Having paid them for their performance, I walked and talked with them as they played down Mahyar, the street I live on.
Hasan didn’t miss a beat on his drum. The father said they began working the streets of upper Tehran since five in the afternoon that day, and it was close to eleven at night by the time that we met. I wonder if Hasan’s little fingers began to hurt after sometime throughout the day. Their real home was Afghanistan, a place where Hasan told me he missed very much. His three sisters and mother survive on the miniscal earnings of their father and brother, who echo the plight of poverty in the rich streets of Tehran with their song. A melodic reminder of cruel disparity in a world of pain and anguish. Hasan stands in the dark with his father saying goodbye to me: A zombie ministrel with scraped bleeding elbows, and a father shreading pain on his life-giving saz. That night I purposely slept on an empty stomach, feeling utterly helpless.
February 26, 2007
The people here know when it’s raining. They will let you know that they know it has been raining, it is raining, or if it will rain soon. Everyone is in anticipation of the rain. You will be sitting in the taxi and the driver will let you know that it is raining, but he had washed his car the night before. Happy old men with wide eyes, who understand time in terms of seasonal storms and catastrophic events, will let you know that it has just rained. My uncle: ” Fared it is raining so hard outside, go look….go go.” I go outside - it’s raining.
Last night had become exceptionally windy and cold, and the mountains had been covered with clouds from the Caspian. I too was anticipating the rain tonight. While preparing a meal of feta cheese, olives and nun-sangak a thunder bolt struck nearby and Tehran began to Cry. I cracked my windows open. The dusty Tehran sidewalks began to smell of clay potts after just soaking in a heavy monsoon. I couldn’t do anything but watch the sky celebrate over the dark winter landscape of Tehran - a symphony of droplets composing every leaf and branch.
The sky was hovering low over the mountains of Shemrun, which is most of the horizon around the city. Using a briefcase as an umbrella, a man was hurring to find a dry shelter from the rain. Pigeons were huddling togther underneath a ledge across the street. My phone rang….it’s my Uncle: “Amu Amu…go look outside…it’s raining…it’s raining…go..go and look.” I reply, “Yes Amu joun, thanks for the update…I noticed. I will go look in a bit. How’s your wife doing?” After a few laughs and trivial conversations I went back to my window to smell and breath in the rain. People here are always in anticipation of the rain, and when it happens they will let the whole world know. I understand this anticipation….their rain brings them hope, and inspiration. I finished a song.
February 18, 2007
In the late 1970s, at the time of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the mainstream U.S. press labelled Islamic fundamentalist hardline revolutionaries “turbans”, and the modernist moderates “neckties”. Culturally, in theocratic Iran, neckties have been denounced as decadent, un-Islamic, and symbolic of the Western oppression. Since then, most Iranian men have worn long-sleeved shirts with collars, but not neckties.
Recently I attended the funeral of one of Iran’s greatest violinsts: Ya Haghi. In Fatemiye square in one of Tehran’s biggest mosques there were hundred’s of people lined up in the streets, just to be apart of Ya Haghi’s funeral. Among the attendies were famous actors, actresses, and many singers from the Shah’s era. Ya Haghi had composed many songs during the Shah’s regime. After 1979, the rules and regulations with regards to music broadcasting had made it increasingly more difficult for musicians such as Ostad Ya Haghi to remain proliferate. He had also broken his right hand while trying to adjust the side mirror of his car: some other car hit his wrist and broke it.
Since Ya Haghi’s instrument was of European decent, the violin had met a similar fate to that of the necktie. As neckties were replaced with open collars, so was the violin replaced largely with the Kamanche. What was striking to me was that most of the male attendies at the funeral wore neckties, including myself. I actually wore a very special necktie that my friend Maryam had given me for my 24th birthday.
Ostad Mozafari had taken me to the funeral, and with him I was able to go all the way inside the mosque, bypassing the people crowded at the mosque door. I couldn’t believe my eyes, neckties everywhere! There was a quranic reader singing verses from the Quran….all of a sudden the crowd of people standing at the door began to yell (translated) ” Golpa is here, let’s pray for him, long live Golpa, long live Golpa….” The religious ceremony quickly turned into Hollywood’s red carpet celebrity walk. Everyone was preoccupied with the old ancient singers from 30 years ago. Golpa is a mere memory of the past, eventhough he is now allowed to sing in Iran again. The entire funeral had become a celebration: neckties, smiles, everyone with their eyes wide open ready to catch another fallen star. I was so happy that my smiles were accompanied with my tears. God bless Ya Haghi and may his music live on for ever.
February 5, 2007
I have been studing poetry with Ostad Mozafari thist past week, since Moharam. It’s difficult to blog all the events and happenings I have experienced, but I will give my best shot. I have been participating quite vigoursly in the ceremonies for Imam Hussien, and I have to say I found a new respect for the Shia-culture here. The entire country has worn black, and amidst the black draps, flags, shirts, pants….Tehran began to snow. The snow flakes covered the morners, those who hit themselves in the chest with chains, chanting Hussien’s name….what an experience. About a week ago me and Mani’s sister, Bita, went to take pictures of the Hussien mourners….I asked a police officer if we could take pictures of the ceremony and his response was: “Are you feeling ok?” Bita laughed and we proceeded to leave the scene. Also for those of you that aren’t quite familiar with the festivities of Ashura….everyone is getting free food. They make lots of Persian rice and a certain stew called Ghame.
I found a job here in Tehran, just a few blocks away from my house, at a Cellphone company: www.irancell.ir
It pay’s roughly 900 bucks a month and I work 5 days out of the week. not bad…..I get my own office and the best part of all this is that my job is on the same street that I go to see Masoud Shaari, my setar master. I got the job to help pay for recording expenses….I have had a few band pracitices so far and each time we get together the guys are feeling more confident in my music.
The weather is GORGEOUS today….it has been raining sleet, ice, and snow in the upper regions of Tehran, where we live….and everytime this happens the next day it’s sunny and amazingly comfortable.
I wrote a new poem called: Tehran is crying. I am turning it into a song which I hope you like, I think you will like it Chris. I miss Austin, I miss the house I was living in…I miss jaming out with Chris, I miss my poetry nights with leyla, I miss the taco stand with Omid, I miss Mike’s driving lessons, I miss my political discourse with Mani, I miss playing music with all my musican friends, recording with Justin, and laughing with Baroukh & Omri. I will be back in a year.
sincerely,
Fared
January 22, 2007
Hello people. I am in Iran now. It’s been snowing in Tehran and Karaj and the weather is beatiful. I got my house all set up and had a dinner party recently with my musician friends. We played music and talked about recording and the different studio’s that exist in Tehran. I tried to check my myspace page but the government here has blocked it, 
….I don’t know what’s going on with that at all.
I Love it here. The people, the foods, the smells, the music, everything. I think I am gonna set up camp for a good while here in Tehran. Last night I went to a Mourning ceremony for Imam Hussien with my cousin Amin in Karaj….a small room with 200 men inside beating themselves in the dark. Quite an experience! Well lunch is ready at my Ameh Ghamar’s house and I must be off. I will post on this blog as often as I can.
Miss all of you very much.
Love,
fd