Tag Archives: literature

Voice On Record: Episode 18 (Ireland – part 2)

Tales and stories from an Irish fireside, some Irish language, some Yeats, and also the third part of TS Eliot’s Murder In The Cathedral. Voice On Record is produced and presented by Sean Williams. Each episode features a selection of recordings of the human voice which have been preserved on vinyl. Historic events stand alongside esoteric guides to better bowling. Arid studio recordings are juxtaposed with location recordings rich with fascinating incidental sounds.

Originally broadcast on  January 5th 2010

http://sbkw.net/voiceonrecord.php

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Voice On Record: Episode 16 (Ireland part 1)

The first of three shows on Ireland, including works read by Yeats, O’Casey and Heaney, and a special experiment using Robert Frost’s readings of “After Apple Picking”. Also featuring part 2 of TS Eliot’s “Murder In The Cathedral”. Voice On Record is produced and presented by Sean Williams. Each episode features a selection of recordings of the human voice which have been preserved on vinyl. Historic events stand alongside esoteric guides to better bowling. Arid studio recordings are juxtaposed with location recordings rich with fascinating incidental sounds.

Originally broadcast on December 15th 2009

http://sbkw.net/voiceonrecord.php

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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.

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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’.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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