On An Overgrown Path

Sometimes I would hear my daughters playing albums of old Iranian singers, the ones who had transplanted themselves to Los Angeles over two decades ago. "That's Mahasti , isn't it?" I would ask. "Or maybe Haideh ?" They would look at me with disbelief. "Maman, how could you know that?" As though these disembodied voices coming out of the stereo had not once been live performers who sang in the restaurants and hotels of Tehran. It was difficult for my daughters, and for most young people, to fathom such a time, because this Iran - the one where a woman's voice was forbidden in public - was the only reality they had ever known. From Iran Awakening by lawyer, human rights activist, Muslim and founder of Centre for the Defence of Human Rights in Iran, Shirin Ebadi . She is particularly noted for her advocacy of the rights of women and children in Iran under the mullahs, and my header photo shows her speaking at the Society for the Defence of Ch...

That photo was taken by me during a qawwali devotion at the Nizamuddin Dargah, Delhi during Ramadan and first appeared On An Overgrown Path in 2014 . Despite being a kafir I have tried during my thirteen years of blogging to present a fair and balanced view of Islam . In fact my attempts to be fair have, I know, caused some readers to think I am too sympathetic to the Islamic cause. But now those attempts have turned round and bitten me, and the story needs telling . My travel plans for 2018 included Iran, a country whose present regime I have little time for , but one with a rich cultural history that just begs to be explored. But as my travel planning progressed I came across the recently introduced requirement in the Iranian visa application process to provide details of social media accounts. Now sympathetic to the Islamic cause I may be. But entering Iran into the Overgrown Path search box returns some posts likely to give the mullahs heart attacks. Such as one containin...

Marjane Satrapi's exquisite animated film Persepolis was made in France, where Satrapi has lived for twenty years, and where the autobiographical graphic novel on which the film was based, was first published. Satrapi was born in Iran and the film hauntingly portrays Satrapi's life during and after the 1979 Iranian revolution , the 30th anniversary of which is currently being celebrated , and her time in exile in Europe after the revolution. The film has generated protests from the present Iranian government. But it also highly critical of the previous regime and alledges that the torturers employed by the Shah were trained by the CIA, and claims that both Iran and Iraq were financed by the West in the war between the two countries. Approaches from Hollywood studios to participate in the production were rebutted, but distribution is handled by Sony Pictures . The classical music world has also been involved in the shadowy world of Iranian politics. In a recent article I told ...

With the row over Iran's nuclear programme escalating I had to laugh at this visitor to On An Overgrown Path today. Atomic Energy Organization Of Iran Tehran, Tehran, Iran, Islamic Republic Of, 0 returning visits No referring link 31st January 2006 12:39:37 theovergrownpath.blogspot.com/2005/12/farewell-to-stromness.html The article the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran read is about the beautiful piano work Farewell to Stromness that composer Peter Maxwell Davies wrote in protest against a proposed uranium mine on the island of Orkney in 1980. Any takers among the many composers who read this blog for a new piece - Farewell to Tehran ? Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Image credit - Swiss info Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to For unto us a child is born

Is identity theft a problem in post-communist classical music? Well, Collegium Musicum , which claims to represent many notable Bulgarian and East European musicians, certainly thinks so. Here is what their website says , complete with typos: Stop the abuse of the Bulgarian musical institutions - The reputation and prestige of Bulgarian musicians abroad is ruined by scrupless people. It happens often abroad where groups of musicians with suspicious quality are presented in the name of Bulgarian musical institutions deceiving both the audience and the host organization. A commission has been found in accordance with the Bulgarian musical institutions and communicating directly to Ministry of culture to lodge complaints against such charlatans. Many of these deceivers has been blocked by now. Victims of such a deceive are „ Sofia Festival Orchestra ”, “ National opera and ballet Sofia ”, “ Sofia Philharmonie ”, Opera and philharmonic society-Plovdiv ” and “ Symphony orchestra of Sliven ...

Celestial Harmonies' 17 CD boxed set Music of Islam ranks alongside Paul Bowles' Music of Morocco as one of the great achievements of cultural documentation. David Parsons was responsible for the project's field recordings, which took ten years to complete. In 1997 he travelled with his family to Karaj in Iran to record volume 12 of the Music of Islam . Here is an extract from the sleeve notes for the 1998 CD release:  Producer David Parsons and his family periodically suffered from stress in accomplishing the recordings for The Music of Series. This was mainly due to the preconceptions (in reality, misconceptions) they held about Islam and the Islamic countries they needed to work in. These fears, they feel, were largely brought about by the negative bias with which the Western news media have portrayed the Islamic countries over recent years....   It was with some trepidation, therefore, that they undertook this Iranian project, particularly because of the very ...

Noteworthy is the upcoming world première of a new work by Hossein Hadisi for voices, percussion and dance. Zahhák: the Dragon King of Persia celebrates the Persian minstrels' art of Naqqáli by re-enacting the ancient myth of Zahhák from the Persian 'Book of Kings'. Hossein Hadisi studied composition with Michael Finnissy and his works include Places I'd Take Michael Finnissy To Visit If He Was Ever Going To Come To Iran for piano. Currently a research associate at Cambridge University studying the traditional Persian improvisation school of Avaz , Hadisi's work spans rock and contemporary music and Bang the Bore XI: Psychobabble based on the Muslim rite of prayer can be sampled here . Zahhák: the Dragon King of Persia is performed by leading contemporary music ensemble Exaudi with dancers from London Contemporary Dance School and the production features paintings by Iranian surrealist master Ali Akbar Sadeghi . Performances are at the RADA Studio Theatre,...

My recent post speculating on links between the Rite of Spring and Sufism quoted Turkish pianist Süher Pekinel on Stravinsky's "global understanding". One of classical music's most enduring works may or may not have its roots in Turkish-Islamic trance rituals, but it is incontestable that classical music has a long history of embracing Eastern traditions. This stretches from Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail , through Rimsky-Korsakov's homage to Arabia Scheherazade and Mahler's setting of ancient Chinese poems in Das Lied von der Erde , to Britten's Curlew River  based on a Japanese Noh play . But while classical music has a long history of fraternizing with the East, it also has a long history of moulding those influences so they, to quote Jordi Savall , "fit into the mental schemes of Western audiences". In the past this remoulding to Western tastes was a form of cultural imperialism , but today it has become just another part ...

One day Lal Shahbaz was wandering in the desert with his friend Sheikh Bahi ud-Din Zakariya . It was winter, and evening time, so they began to build a fire to keep warm. They found some wood, but then they realised they had no fire. So Baha ud-Din suggested that Lal Shahbaz turn himself into a falcon and get fire from hell. Off he flew, but an hour later he came back empty-handed. "There is no fire in hell," he reported. "Everyone who goes there brings their own fire, and their own pain from this world." That Sartresque story is from William Dalrymple's new book Nine Lives, In Search of Sacred India . Lal Shabaz was a 13th century Afghan Sufi saint and contemporary of Mevlana Rumi . Innovative and independent French label Accords Croisés has just released Les Chantes Brulés, Hommage à Rūmī (Songs of Rebirth, Homage to Rumi) on which classical Persian singer Ali Reza Ghorbani performs his own settings of Rumi and other Sufi poets. In an excellent accompany...

That photo was taken at a 2003 concert performance of Ross Daly's Iris project . Ross is second from left* and in the centre is the revered sarangi player Dhruba Ghosh who died recently. For me Iris is one of Ross' finest projects; the CD has been long deleted but the album can be downloaded legally for free from his personal website . Ross Daly's mission is not to create (con)fusions of old music traditions , but to create a new music tradition drawing on old modal forms . Iris is a case of mission magnificently accomplished; probably the best track on a stellar album is Indra Dhanush for which Dhruba Ghosh takes centre stage - audition via the stream below. * The musicians on Iris are Ross Daly - (rabab, Cretan lyra, tarhu, tanpoura, laouto), Dhruba Ghosh - India (sarangi, vocals), Hamid Reza Khabazi - Iran (tar,vocals), Partha Sarathi Mukherjee - India (tabla), Vassilis Rakopoulos - Greece (guitar), Kelly Thoma - Greece (Cretan lyra), Giorgos Xylouris - Greece (Cre...

In the Delius anniversary year it is pleasing to see the composer's Mass of Life receiving the attention it deserves thanks to an outstanding new Naxos recording by David Hill and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra with the Bach Choir. But most of the attention so far has been focused on Delius and Nietzsche, so I thought it was time to redress the balance and give Zarathustra a little bit of the limelight. Peter J. Pirie provides one of the most balanced assessments of A Mass of Life in his book The English Musical Renaissance , explaining that “The words are by Nietzsche, from Also Sprach Zarathustra , and they are better poetry than philosophy; Delius loved this sort of intemperate, heady versifying, it confirmed his prejudices and he did not look too deeply into the logic of the text”. Delius may have valued Nietzsche for his poetry more than his philosophy, but, nevertheless, a study of the text is revealing. Far from propagating Zarathustra’s original teachings, Nie...

'It seems to me that Honegger is one of the contemporary composers of greatest musical value. In spite of his "modernism" he refrains from going beyond certain limits. He has been influenced by modern tendencies, but he knows how to select some innovations and not others, while remaining faithful to what he may define as the idea of music - something so many contemporary composers have just abandoned' - Pablo Casals Herbert von Karajan's recordings of Arthur Honegger's Symphonies Nos. 2 & 3 are the definite accounts and rank among the classics of the gramophone. The inlay above is from Alexander Rahbari's performance of the Symphony No. 3 which is committed but, hardly surpisingly, falls short of Karajan's searing account. But I am featuring the CD Rahbari made with the BRTN Philharmonic Orchestra in Brussels for its persuasive advocacy of the little heard Symphony No. 5 " Di Tre Re ". There are links between Rahbari and Karajan as the...

Genetic diversity is the essential mechanism by which populations adapt to changing environments. The diversity may be at the global level or at the micro level. As the celebrated Bach interpreter John Eliot Gardiner explained in his portrait of the master composer , genetic diversity is crucial in music - "it is typical of the inquisitive yet easy-going pragmatism of creative musicians in all ages that they should wish to source and acquire new techniques regardless of their provenance". He then goes on to explain that "As Kepler reportedly said, amid the massacres of religious wars: 'the laws of elliptical motion belong to no man or principality'. The same could be said of music". That reference to the laws of elliptical motion is coincidentally auspicious. It is believed that the celebrated whirling of Sufis from the Mevlevi Order depicts planets in the Solar System orbiting the sun. The Mevlevi order was founded by followers of Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhamma...

'Teatro alla Scala's chief legal counsel ... has today asked Opera Chic in a terse but polite e-mail to change the Opera Chic website's logo because it supposedly creates confusion in the readers minds with La Scala's own official website, due to Opera Chic logo's similarity to La Scala's own logo (until a few minutes ago, now it has been replaced). La Scala also took issue with some other minor things: they don't want anybody to take pictures inside the theater before, during, or after the performances, and so they asked Opera Chic to take down from the site all and every photograph taken inside La Scala: we are working on removing those, too ...' ~ from Opera Chic blog June 6 2007. 'Want to start a blog in Iran? Then you'll have to register it with the government - which has recently begun to require that all bloggers register at samandehi.ir , a site established by the ministry of culture of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's governme...

As Condoleezza Rice prepares us for possible US action against Iran it is disappointing to see so many people swallowing the spin about the US Secretary of State's musical activities. History has proved that politics and music don't mix. British prime minister Edward Heath was one who tried, and Richard Ingrams summed up the results rather well: Conductor unbecoming - Edward Heath was hugely proud of his musical abilities, an estimation not shared by all Heath has had very kind obituaries and I would only quarrel with the Guardian's veteran music critic Edward Greenfield, who said that as far as his music was concerned, he was 'impervious to criticism'. In the musical world, Heath's cack-handed attempts to conduct an orchestra, a very difficult thing to do, were the subject of much mirth. When I made some disparaging remarks in this column on his musical abilities, he responded with a furious letter, listing all the orchestras he had conducted. It did not see...

Tomorrow's post features a contemporary Requiem that replaces the Catholc liturgy with an eclectic selection of syncretic texts including one by Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í faith. The photo above was taken by me when I visited the Bahá'í Lotus Temple in New Delhi, which was designed by the Iranian-American architect Fariborz Sahba . The Bahá'í faith is the youngest of the world's independent religions; it is monotheistic and based on Revelations delivered by Bahá'u'lláh who was born in Tehran in 1817. Baha’i was the world's fastest-growing religion between 1910 and 2010; however the number of followers is still very small compared with the other great traditions. No definitive figures are available, but the total number of Bahá'í followers worldwide is estimated at 8 million. Because the Bahá'ís are considered heretical by orthodox Islam, members of the faith have suffered widespread persecution, particularly in Iran . S...

Celebrated Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csiszentmihalyi argues that flow is a mental state of immersive and exclusive concentration that at the highest level can trigger mystical experiences - the state where nothing else seems to matter. Mihaly Csiszentmihalyi explains that music reduces psychic entropy by organising the mind of the listener, and he defines psychic entropy as the disorder generated by information that conflicts with and distracts from the carrying out of priority intentions. Extending his theory of how music reduces psychic entropy, Csiszentmihalyi proposes that greater rewards are open to those who learn to make music , and that even greater rewards can accrue to the great musicians who extend the harmony they create in sound to "the more general and abstract harmony that underlies the kind of social order we call civilisation". One of my own modest priority intentions was fulfilled recently when I heard one of the Chemiriani dynasty of Persian mus...

These photos were taken last week in Morocco's High Atlas where I was celebrating my forthcoming 70th birthday with some serious trekking. On my itinerary were the cascades at Setti Fatma, the upper slopes of Mount Toubkal - North Africa's highest mountain - and a two day traverse from Imlil to Ouirgane via the 2664 metre Tizi M'Zik Pass complete with Berber guide, mule and cook. My playlist for downtime on the treks included Alan Hovhaness ' Mysterious Mountain - persuasively advocated by none other than Fritz Reiner with his Chicago orchestra but now woefully neglected, the contemporary minimalist acoustic folk melodies of the Tunisian duo Ÿuma, the single-pointed concentration of Jonathan Harvey 's Tranquil Abiding , the motivational oud meets disco of DuOud , and Robert Rich 's exploration of the space between music and silence Inner Landscapes . Both Jonathan Harvey and Robert Rich's music is informed in different ways by Buddhism. The H...