Category Archives: Promos

Promos for our shows.

Six Pillars – Gender, Wars and Chadores…Art Basel Miami with Canvas Magazine

This interview with Canvas founder and director Ali Khadra looks at a series of talks curated by Canvas hosted at Art Basel by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co- Director, Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery, London.

Ali Khadra explains why and how Canvas intends to turn the talks into a book and documentary, and examines our preconceived notions regarding art, the middle east and sexuality with this series.

The interview is interspersed with extracts from the third of the talks: Gender, Wars and Chadors talk on Contemporary Middle Eastern Art, organised by Canvas magazine at Art Salon, 6 December 2009.

Artists taking part in the third talk were Ghada Amer, Kader Attia and Akram Zaatari while Hans Ulrich Obrist chaired. Watch the video here.

Six Pillars to Persia is produced and presented by Fari Bradley, a journalist living in London, for Resonance 104.4FM

Pédilüv – Ep.2 – Eating in Tongues

EATING IN TONGUES

Julia Loktev

Votre bain de pieds pour les oreilles de ce soir vous immerge dans la pièce sonore de Julia Loktev (photo) et Nancy Steadman, Eating in Tongues. Cette pièce, sortie des archives du LMC, a été réalisée en 1991, pour le festival Radio Contortion, organisé par la radio Montrealaise CKUT, membre du réseau des radios créatives, Radio. 24mn de délectation des mots, de cuisine du langage pour ne pas oublier de se mâcher la langue de temps en temps.

pediluv@radiocampusparis.org

Six Pillars Human Rights in Iran Gig – 29th Nov, Ginglik

Iran-flyer_v4

Read more about the event here
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In aid of Amnesty International

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The Ginglik underground bar is directly in front of Shepherd’s Bush tube station in the middle of the green as you cross the road to reach the West 12 Shopping Centre.

http://www.patrickmonahan.co.uk/
http://www.myspace.com/theslidingrule
http://www.myspace.com/roshisongs
http://www.iranian.com/salehi.html
70’s Iranian music sounds like:
http://www.myspace.com/persianfunk
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Organised by Six Pillars to Persia radio show, on Resonance 104.4FM
http://sixpillarstopersia.wordpress.com

Get tickets in advance from: http://www.wegottickets.com/event/64436

See some of Amnesty’s work in Iran: http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/iran

Six Pillars – Mansour Bahrami & East

Famous for serving six balls at once on a professional court, under arm serves, and speciality shots including the ‘power shot through the legs’, ‘the lob through the legs’ and ‘the drop shot’ which bounces back over the net due to excessive backspin tennis impresario Mansour Bahrami is not to be matched. At the launch of his book he talks about his extraordinary rise to stardom via homelessness in France and the singularly harsh treatment he received as a child on the tennis courts in Iran.

mansour

BIBA (The British Iranian Business Association) organised the evening in Summer 08 as part of their public service programming.  Fari Taydayon from The Energy Deployment Company and Bez Ghazian review the event at the Hilton where Bahrami was speaking.

The show features classical music played by Haydn Dickenson: piano imitates and transcends santoor in the ten minute piece ‘Tariq 1″ from the album ‘East’.

Six Pillars – The Pursuit of Pleasure

Author Rudi Mathee discusses his study of Persian uses for narcotics and other more mundane stimulants throughout history.  Mathee’s book “The Pursuit of Pleasure” has just been released in Iran, and Fari Bradley asks him about Sherry, Shiraz wine and stimulants and opiates in ancient Persia from coffee to opium.pp_cover_400hMathee focusses on the Safavid period (1501-1722) in Persia, when excessive drinking by the Shah was sanctioned by society, as he was seen as the son of Shi’i Imam and therefore exempt from the ban on alcohol. This one example embodies many of the massive paradoxes that existed during this period, and still exist as the tension between public piety and personal freedom.

Like the British, the Persians lived through entire eras of compulsive drinking, yet which were then followed by periods when imbibing became punishable with 40 -80 lashings of the whip due to Islam.

This progamme was originally broadcast from Resonancefm studios in  London on July 28th 2008.

Six Pillars – A Modern Take on Folk

When five young men who are a typical modern concoction of traditional Iranian values and MTV play music together what will it sound like?

simorgh3

Simorgh is the name of a mystical bird in Sufi folklore. As a band of young urbanites however, their music incorporates group chanting and a lyrical poetry that is folk-rap, accompanied by the evocative ney flute, tar strings and the empty bellow of the daf drum.  This alluring mixture is – as far as our experience shows – at it’s optimum best when seen live, so we brought them into the studio to whip up some of that tribal feeling we’ve come to associate their performances with.

simorgh

Fari Bradley talks to the five members of the band about leaving university, playing football, parents, Bryan Adams and musical instruments as weapons of culture.

Simorgh run workshops for the BBC on Iranian music and put on their own concerts around London. With their own unique melange of influences, the band stand for something many of us can comprehend: what it’s like to be a cultural cocktail in London now.

This programme was originally broadcast from the Resonance104.4fm studios on July 21st 2008.

Six Pillars – Jamshid Bayrami

6IIIs to Persia on Resonance104.4fm

Photographer Jamshid Bayrami shows his works in ‘Haj’, the opening exhibition at Xerxes Fine Arts Gallery in London, the only permanent gallery dedicated to Iranian art.

Bayrami has worked successfully as a photo journalist and is known for his picture of a bloodied hand print on a T-shirt during student protests that appeared on the front of The Economist magazine. Following three days of bloodshed at Tehran University in July 1999, the subject of the picture Ahmad Batebi was given a 13-year prison sentence.  Bayrami’s work continues to be frank and sincere, yet has taken on some very subtle tones as he moves into the realm of art for this exhibition.

Here Fari Bradley talks to gallery owner and curator Ali Bagherzadeh, who is himself a collector, about the show and its pieces.

This show was originally broadcast from the Resonancefm studios on July 7th 2008

…Listen to the interview…

Six Pillars – The Iranian Funk Scene

When you hear this stuff you are transported. So much energy and such a fine example of east-west musical balance.  On hearing these tracks the mind is drawn down images of side streets throbbing with nightclubs and bright fashion, in a setting of affluence and passionate youth.  The 70’s was a culture boom of fashion, music and norms in Iran that has not yet been equaled.  To top this, many Iranians left Iran never to return in the late 70s, so the era has become iconic.

Fari Bradley talks to Arash Saedinia, a Los Angeles-based music enthusiast and creator of the Fars Funk website, about his passion for vintage Persian popular recordings.

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Synthesizing indigenous traditions and Western influences, Iranian artists created a notable body of left-field psychedelic, rock, funk, and folk songs in the sixties and seventies. The show features songs from “Pomegranates”, a compilation of Persian pop gems due later this year from B-Music.

This programme was originally broadcast on Monday 16th June 2008 13.30

Listen to the Radio Show!

Six Pillars – Persian Esoterica ‘1

Mithras - temple fresco in Marino, Italy. 2nd Century A.D.

Mithras – temple fresco, Marino, Italy. 2nd Century A.D.

nabarz

All too often the English language refers to pagans as an insult, or a primitive people. Yet some of our most common roots are deep within these complex and highly telling belief systems, one of which: Mithraism Nabarz upholds as Persia’s greatest export to date.

Sufi-mystic Payam Nabarz discusses Phrygian Caps, snakes in ancient Persia and the calender of the moon. Zoroastrian and Sufi interests brought Payam to read up about Mithras, and he has steeped his life in the esoteric history of Iran and Zoroastrian rituals, publishing several books and numerous papers on aspects of both, available from Amazon

Fari interviews him on what Mithraism is and the different Persian calenders. For a deeper conversation on these matters refer to late Dec 08/Jan 09 when we invite Nabarz back in the studio for stage 2 in our radio foray into Persian esoterica.

This show was broadcast live from Resonancefm studios, London on March 31st 2008

Music: Kali Z. Fasteau

Escape Pod: How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas

Hooting Yard’s Frank key narrates “How Lonesome a Life Without Nerve Gas” by James A. Trimarco for Escape Pod. It’s a story of artificial intelligence gone badly wrong in a distant future imperialist war.

EP is the only weekly Science Fiction and Fantasy audio-magazine. If you like this funny story you can find 89 more of them at Escape Pod.