David Dalle
Thursday May 30th, 2024 with David Dalle
30 for 30: Iran! Shahram Nazeri, Malek Masoudi, Kayhan Kalhor, Kiya Tabassian, Hamid Motebassem.

We continue my year-long celebration of 30 years on-air at the mighty 93.1 with a look at 30 of the most significant albums in my musical evolution. In the summer of 1996, I took a trip to Vancouver, and, as I still do whenever I visit somewhere new, I spent a bit of time digging through record stores. Back in the 90's, this was mostly compact discs of course. One shop I visited in downtown Vancouver, whose owner was Persian-Canadian, had a large number of Persian albums, mostly produced from labels based in Los Angeles, as the largest Persian diaspora lives in California. I picked up a number of albums, and two of these I will feature today as part of my 30 for 30. Before this trip, my exposure to Persian music was a single Nonesuch Explorer series album which featured the famed santur player Faramarz Payvar. But these new albums changed the entire musical universe for me. I listened to them that day, one was singer Malek Masoudi singing Bakhtiari folk music, the other was the Persian classical and Sufi singer, Kurdish-Iranian Shahram Nazeri. I could not believe what I was hearing. This was music of passionate intensity, impossible beauty, endless melancholy. A couple of years later, I heard Kayhan Kalhor in concert. He was touring with the great Hindustani sitarist Shujaat Hussein Khan as Ghazal. They performed at the Museum of Civilization, and, in the first half of the concert, they each performed as a soloist, and then in duet in the second half. This was the first time I heard Persian music live. Kayhan Kalhor is a supreme master on the kamancheh and was a founding member of the Dastan Ensemble (my 30 for 30 list could have comprised of most of their albums!). Kayhan Kalhor's solo album "Scattering Stars Like Dust" (many of the most poetic album and song titles are in my Persian collection) was released around the same time, and it showed me Persian instrumental music could be as rich, and intense, and profound as the vocal music. The album features a three movement suite in Dastgah Chahargah on the Kamancheh. The first and last movements he is accompanied on tombak by Pejman Hadadi, but the heart of the piece is the slow second movement, with kamancheh alone. This music was equal to any of Bach's solo cello suites. Listening to this music, I feel like I am listening to the very soul of the Earth. The 30 for 30 albums we've heard so far (in order of appearance): 1. Lustmord "The Monstrous Soul" Side Effects 2. Ludwig Van Beethoven/Berliner Philharmoniker, Herbert Von Karajan et al. "Symphony No. 9" Deutsche Grammophon 3. Doudou N'Diaye Rose "Djabote" Realworld 4. Julius Eastman/Lutoslawski Piano Duo with Joanna Duda, Mischa Kozlowski "Unchained" Dux 5. The Master Musicians of Jajouka featuring Bachir Attar "Apocalypse Across The Sky" Axiom 6. Ustad Bismillah Khan & Party "Shehnai Recital" EMI India 7. Franz Liszt/Claudio Arrau "12 Etudes d'exécution transcendante" Philips 8. Ludwig Van Beethoven transcribed Franz Liszt/Cyprien Katsaris "Symphony No. 9" Teldec 9. Malek Masoudi "Mandir" Shahram 10. Shahram Nazeri "Aatash Dar Neystaan" Shahram 11. Kayhan Kalhor "Scattering Stars Like Dust" Traditional Crossroads