Iran: Music of the Persian Gulf

Many of Iran’s regional folk music traditions are still relatively unknown to world music audiences in Europe and North America. One of the most colourful and distinctive of these is the music of the southern province of Khuzestan on the Persian Gulf, a region with a long history as a cultural melting pot, lying as it does along the ancient trade routes between the ‘Orient and Africa. Here, black Iranians, some descended from African slaves, have merged Iranian and African melodies and rhythms into a rich cocktail of mesmerising tunes, many of them used in healing trance ceremonies known as zar.Songlines readers may have had a taste of this music from the Jahle band – a group first brought to the attention of listeners outside Iran by Andy Kershaw in his Rough Guide to Iran. This music features a number of wind and percussion instruments not found anywhere else in Iran, including the ney anban (bagpipes) played on this album by their best known exponent, virtuoso performer Saeid Shanbezadeh, who has almost single-handedly brought the ney anban and the repertoire of the Persian Gulf region to the attention of audiences within Iran and outside, particularly in France where he has performed at several festivals.

This recent album presents a selection of dance music, wedding music, love songs and sacred music, displaying an extraordinary range of sounds, from the quiet contemplation of ‘Shame Ghariban, a sacred piece, to the rousing, hypnotic and swirling dance rhythms of ‘Bandari’. Several of the tracks begin with a bagpipe solo – highly ornamented melodies in free rhythm, and with a raw, nasal sound, which circulate intensely around a central pitch – leading into a rhythmic section with percussion, clapping and singing. The final track ‘Charveh’, is a solo vocal lament. In addition to the ney anban, Shanbehzadeh also performs on ney jafti (double flute) and ney mouro (an oboe-like instrument) and is accompanied by his son, Naghib, and Mahmoud Bardakania on various percussion instruments; the singer is Abdollah Moghateli Motlagh. Whilst the recording conveys only a part of what one experiences in a live performance – Shanbezadeh dances on stage when he performs – the disc certainly communicates something of the vibrancy of a very different sound of Iran from the shores of the Persian Gulf.