Tag Archives: Fari Bradley

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

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Six Pillars – Insight & Rakshan Bani Etemad

A season at the British Film Institute of the work of female film director Rakhshan Bani-Etemad. Organised by small not-for-profit company Insight, the season was accompanied by masterclasses given by Bani-Etemad herself and marks the first ever comprehensive screening outside of Iran of her work.

David Omid Alamouti discusses Insight’s alternative models of film-making and the singular style of Bani-Etemad, masterclasses with Mike Leigh and Polish film.

Music by rap artist Reveal and Simorgh linked to Insight through a Contemporary Iranian Music event at Camden Underworld later that month that featured in the Bani Etemad workshops in a student film


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Six Pillars – Persian Electronic Music Yesterday & Today

Sote is a composer and sound designer living in America. On a chance visit to Iran he heard a unique sound he had never come across before, the 1960’s avant garde electronics of Alireza Mashayekhi. Sote’s interest then led him to develop a relationship with Mashayekhi with whom he recently released a double CD on Sub Rosa records. His roots in Germany, Sote developed a trademark process for audio that gives his work its bizarre shape and signature sound. After a release of drum and bass on WARP records, Sote moved into experimental music and sound on Sub Rosa.

In this show, Fari interviews Sote about sound processes and the moment he first heard Mashayekhi’s music. We hear two experimental tracks from the album Persian Electronic Music Yesterday and Today 1966-2006. Many thanks to Sub Rosa Records for allowing us to podcast these tracks.

This show was broadcast live from Resonancefm studios in London April 7th 2008.

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Six Pillars – Persian Esoterica ‘1

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

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

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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

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Six Pillars – Soheil Nasseri, Sonato No. 0 and BIBA

Classical pianist Soheil Nasseri gives an interview before his UK debut at The Royal Festival Hall. We hear pieces from Nasseri, details of unusual adventures in downtown US city schools and about performing the UK premiere of Sonata No.0, by little known Parsi Essex-born composer: Kaikhosru Sorabji, involving complex chords and fingering.

Also visiting the studio is Babak Emamian from the eminent British Iranian Business Association. BIBA endeavours to bring Iranians career opportunities and to help them find their way in the world of business. He and host Fari Bradley discuss everything from British-Iranian policemen’s balls to Calvinism.

This show was originally broadcast across London on 104.4fm on 17th March 08

Six Pillars to Persia has a FACEBOOK group, which receives early news of prizes and listings.

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Six Pillars – Googoosh Special

A look at Googoosh, ‘the daughter of Iran’ introducing her to those who’ve never heard of her, celebrating her for those who love her, and talking with the documentary maker who made the only film about her. Farhad Zamani managed to do this while Googoosh was still in Iran and still banned from singing or appearing in public. The film was released at the very moment the government were thinking of letting her leave in 2000, a landmark date. This intensely psychological film contains rare footage and interviews with those around Googoosh, building up an in-depth picture of someone who though alive, does not appear. At the same time Zamani uses experimental editing techniques to relay the tension and underline certain issues, all the while doing as Googoosh had done for many years: speaking through that which cannot be spoken.

Six Pillars to Persia is an English Language program celebrating Iranian outsider arts and modern Persian heritage. Mondays 1.30pm GMT, Sundays 8.30pm GMT

This program was broadcast on March 3rd 2008 from the Audio Visual 08 festival Museum Of Modern Art Middlesborough.

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Six Pillars – Tangiers to Tehran and Patrick Monahan


Fari Bradley talks to Irish-Iranian-Jordie comedian Patrick Monahan live in the studio. The very spontaneously funny Patrick also muses on comedy as an art form and what it was in his upbringing that made him a comedian. Patrick proves that some comedians are full of repeated anecdotes, and others are just naturally funny.
This week’s show also features short interviews from the Tangiers to Tehran festival, celebrating women in cinema from the Middle East and Northern Africa. An amazing array of films were pulled together for the event, held at several venues across London. This unusual festival took palce mostly due to the hard work of Suzy Gillet from the French Institute and James Neil from Parallax Media. We interview them both, with a comment from Dr Kay Dickinson, one of the key speakers at the film symposium.

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Six Pillars – Queen Achiever Camila Batmanghelidjh

Camila Batmanghelidjh (daughter of the renowned Iranian doctor Dr Batman: cure by water) is a psychotherapist and founder/director of Kids’ Company.Prince Charles at Kids Company - London

Born in Tehran to prosperous Iranian and Belgian parents, Batmanghelidjh went to public school and is severely dyslexic. She did her studies using a tape recorder instead of pen and paper, received a first class Honours degree in theatre and dramatic arts, then a Masters on the philosophy of counseling and psychotherapy, two years of child observation and a course in art therapy at Goldsmiths. After four years of psychotherapy training she worked with children as a nanny, and discovered her talent.

Batmanghelidjh used her mortgage repayments to set up The Place2Be, a psychotherapy and counseling service to children in schools. It is now a national project and serves in excess of 20,000 children a year.

For ten years Kids Company has survived due to the support of charitable trusts and businesses, twice Camila re-mortgaged her flat for Kids Company’s lack of funding. Camila won the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2005. She has written Shattered Lives: Children Who Live with Courage and Dignity, ISBN 1-84310-434-2 and other papers. In 2006 alone she was nominated in ‘The Good List ’06’, of exceptional people and appeared at the Conservative Party Conference and was made Woman of the year.

She curated two major art exhibitions, Shrinking Childhoods at the Tate Modern in ’05 and Demons and Angels: Does it have to be this way? at Shoreditch Town Hall. Lastly as testimony to the widespread interest in her work, Camila appeared on Desert Island Discs in October, 2006 and talks here to Fari Bradley about the company, the children and the things that make the work necessary, accompanied by one of the many that Kids Company has helped.

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Six Pillars – Lilly Ladjevardi & Tangiers to Tehran

Film maker and esteemed music librarian Lilly Lajevardi discusses what it means to sit with Charlie Gillet four hours every week, selecting music for his BBC World music show, and to meet your business partner in the Sahara desert.

Lilly made her name through music entrepreneurship and elegance, mixing with corporates and high falooting businesses (e.g. Annabell’s in Mayfair), basically any business that require musical and ambient direction. Lilly was one of the first people to conceive of an in-house music service, where fitting tunes were selected for play in hotels and other venues, as bespoke music libraries for the space. For those with no time or confidence to browse the web and trawl the record store, Lilly is your consultant (pictured: filming in Qatar).

Otherwise Lilly is a very down to earth person, working with award winning documentary film maker Kika Vliegenthart. Together they film subjects as far removed from each other as Hong Kong city lights and camels chewing quietly

See her website Muzai for samples of her wall projections Here

Find out more about the film festival mentioned: Tangiers To Tehran

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Six Pillars – we mean it when we say experimental.

This is the most work we’ve ever had to do for a show: collating the sparse and little known threads of modern Persian music. Mostly Persian music is tripe, with little but the language or a few musical notes to differentiate it from other trash music. In fact so abundant are the cheap imitations by Middle Easterners, that Middle Eastern pop, hip hop, house and dance have developed into their own sub genres and even spawned a stereotpye anti-appreciation movement (Kill Iranian Kitsch)...

Happily however, we do not linger on that here, instead we leap from Jew’s harp to percussive experiments to nu-fusion jazz: we’ve searched far and wide to bring you some of the best sounds in alternative Iranian modern music. Listen out for the distinct Iranian vocal technique employed by Mamak Khadem. Also listen out for the throat sound experiments with a Jew’s harp (Morteza Esmaili pictured) and the wonderful Sitar piece by Omid, (but he should have called it Se tar).

Thanks to all the artists, who gave permission for this podcast.

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