MALIHEH MORADI & EHSAN MATOORI
OUR SORROW (ARC Music)
This is a remarkable album. Since 1979 and the Iranian revolution that imposed Islamofascism on their previously enlightened and progressive country, Iranian women have been forbidden from singing in public. Moradi sings out loud and clear here with plaintive vocals, her sorrow and melancholy echoed back in the expressive orchestrations by Matoori. Of course they had to leave home and live in the USA to do this, but she hopes to return and sing for the women of Iran. There are atmospheric sounds: from the woody gasba, the Algerian reed flute, to a big string orchestra with electric bass. The superb "For the Rain" is a cinematic immersion with strong classical hints. I hear santoor on "The Crier," which sounds more Bollywood than gypsy in the context of the big swooping orchestral arrangement. There is also a reed flute on here in counterpoint to her singing. Moradi's tone balances well with the bombast of the music. There's a cello, oud and ceramic tombak, or goblet drum on "Since I became your prey," — I think she is also playing that: it's a small instrument she learned as a child. Something sounding like a sitar joins in, and there's even a rainstick. It veers from a black & white film soundtrack to full-blown opera. Two cartoon videos on Youtube stress the cinematic elements of the songs, "Be My Moon" (with jazz piano) and "Six doors" (which has the operatic sensibility) — and these are not even the best tracks on the album. It builds to a climax with "A Tale of Sorrow" and leaves you breathless. A majestic achievement.
SHUJAAT HUSAIN KHAN & KATAYOUN GOUDARZI
RUBY (EPK 2015)
I am constantly reminded that Iran is one of the oldest and richest cultures in the world, and as recently as the 18th century overcame the Mughal Empire in India. (This is usually while I am pondering how the US ended up allied with the House of Saud, the enemies of the Iranians, but then thugs attract thugs.) So there are strong threads binding Iran to their Eastern neighbors in Afghanistan and modern India. These two artists are a sitar player from India and a singer from Iran united by a love of the poetry of the great Sufi and mystic poet Rumi. In the past they have recorded it with spoken word and simple accompaniment, but for their fifth outing they bring in a full band and Katayoun sings the poetry. The band are perfect: the deep night plaint of the sarangi and bansuri flute float out like an evening mist, then the tabla and sitar come in to create the complete mood for the vocalist. Musically it fits in with Bollywood, although Shujaat Khan (son of Vilayat Khan) is known as one of North India's best classical musicians. He was considered a virtuoso on the sitar by the time he went to elementary school. The lyrics were not included in this disc (& the typography is unreadable) but you can seek out the rich poetry of Rumi (Jalâl ad-Dîn Muhammad Balkhî) online or in a bookstore or library and enjoy the liberating thoughts of his imagination.
TRIO CHEMIRANI
DAWAR (Harmonia Mundi HMC905273)
The new Rough Guides got me on a Blues kick, and I was listening to Skip James, Roy Smeck, Barbecue Bob and other bottleneck sliders and National steel strummers, so when I put this on, it fit right in. While it's not a twelve string, the mood of the santoor fits and the production has a big room echo (it was recorded live in a French abbey) which adds an eerieness, but the stringed instrument (and the saz which also crops up occasionally) is not the focus of this recording. It's the three drums the brothers & father play, the zarb, that sound like tablas, and the opening strings were just to get our attention. You have to imagine "talking drums" as the dialogue evolves around the lyrics of some ghazals by the famed Persian poet, Rumi. The trio have jammed with African, Iranian and Indian musicians in the past, and explored jazz and other type of fusion, but here, on Dawâr it's down to the hands of the father and sons. It's traditional, even classical, Iranian music with enough variety to keep your attention.
KAYHAN KALHOR
I WILL NOT STAND ALONE (World Village 468100)
Kalhor plays a shah kaman on here. Like me, you won't have heard of the instrument, because he had it built. It is a type of spike fiddle which sounds like a viola. There's also a bass santour which sounds like a cembalon. I put this disc on and I thought the first track was a Nino Rota tune since I could hum along, but then I looked at the sleeve and didn't see any writing credits. I presume the coincidence can be put down to folk sources. But then I started to hear echoes of Velvet Underground: could there possibly be folk origins to some of their tunes? It's not entirely out of the question given John Cale's background. Kalhor is a really excellent and expressive player (he has played with Yo-Yo Ma) and has appeared in many configurations, but here plays in a simple duet format. It's mostly rather mournful music: I guess there's not a lot to be cheerful about in Iran these days and if you are looking for sprightly "chase scene" cembalom as heard in gypsy music, it doesn't happen. The album does end with a lively exchange, but overall this is very meditative and down-tempo.
LOGA RAMIN TORKIAN
MEHRAAB (Terrestrial Lane)
Loga Torkian is an Iranian composer who lives in Montreal so he probably has more freedom and more access to outside ideas than his countrymen. No doubt the Ayatollahs hate Cheb i Sabbah but that must make him more desirable to the Iranian youth and he seems to be an ideal for Torkian and his colleagues. (If I've told you once Ayatollah a million times not to listen to that!) For this album he collaborated with a singer, Khosro Ansari, and several expatriot Iranian sidemen on traditional instruments, such as bendir, tomback and frame drums. A founder of Niyaz and Axiom of Choice, Torkian uses studio tools to create a wash of sound that sustains his dreamy mood. The album title means "Shrine" and he has erected a sanctuary for some sonic washes that swoosh around the echoey vocals (based on traditional poetry) from which he extrapolates string solos on viol, electric guitar, fretless bass (don't fret: it's only a bass), kamoon and rabab. (There's a gallery of his instruments here.)
NIYAZ
NINE HEAVENS (Six Degrees 657036 1150-2MJ)
This is a grandiose richly textured set. The music comes from Iranian, Indian and Turkish traditional repertoires and has been given a modern treatment with loads of studio effects, synth washes and so on, but this does not detract from the effect. In fact the propulsive beat is occasionally helped along by the technology. Azam Ali, the singer, calls it modern Sufi music. It's more of a soundtrack than a dance album with dreamy vocals that, however, start sounding very samey to those of us who don't understand the words. The vocals, in fact, could have been left off and an instrumental disc would be as welcome as the "unplugged" second disc, which doesn't sound that different from the first. (It's the "raw" versions of the same songs, the unaugmented studio tracks, as if they couldn't decide whether to do a straight album or one with layers of effects.) There are drones on the unplugged side which I guess are not from synths, but it's hard to tell what's making the sounds, maybe a bowed oud? The acoustic set sounds more medieval, if anything, though a lot of European folk music also sounds medieval to my untutored ears. The overall mood of the treated set reminds me occasionally of Brian Eno's 1978 Music for Films or Peter Gabriel's 1989 Passion album (the soundtrack to the film). Both of those albums were groundbreaking in their own way so today it's almost a cipher when you have a synth wash and some traditional tunes. "Niyaz" means yearning in both Farsi and Urdu, and they are yearning for a global trance-dance hit with this album. It's a pleasant if low-key effort, well recorded, just needing an extra twist of something brilliant.