Tag Archives: Iranian electronica

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 – 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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