Tag Archives: singer
Six Pillars – Hamed Nikpay
Composer-singer Hamed Nikpay speaks from USA about writing music, leaving Iran for the US in his 20s and what he’s currently listening to on his Ipod.
The interview comes prior to his collaboration with dancer and choreographer Shahrokh Moshkin Ghalam, London 2012. Both Nikpay and Ghalam have experimented extensively with forms of juerga and toque from Flamenco interwoven into Persian classical forms and both are highly passionate in their delivery, so it makes perfect sense for them to work together on stage, Nikpay providing the music, Moshkin Ghalam the dance.
Six Pillars – Iran’s Godfather of Psyche
Back from the Brink – An Audio Portrait
Kouroush Yaghmaie brought psyche music to Iran. He lived his music from his teens to adulthood until banned from singing, he was forced to produce children’s songs under a pseudonym for 19 years. His new album ‘Back from the Brink’ comes as a double CD and book, the extensive and detailed text by Kouroush Yaghmaie himself. In it Yaghmaie describes how he used his guitar to sound like a sitar, how his fellow musicians fell out of performing and heartbreakingly, lost the gift of music. Six Pillars has created a bespoke audio piece with a voice narrating over the songs the words of the man who for so long could not speak out. First broadcast in May 2012.
Six Pillars – Ebi
Ebi is one of Iran’s most foremost pop singers from the 70s, although his music has been banned there for many years. Listening to his unique, warm baritone voice, to his stirring ballads, it’s amazing to think that over 40 years ago Ebi was already a well-established star with fans all over the world.
Ebi left Iran two years before the ’79 Islamic Revolution after recording six hit albums, and continued to work in the US. Later, he recorded another 13 albums and is still performing at sold-out concerts at prestigious venues around the world including the Sydney Opera House and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center.
In 2010 Ebi played his only UK concert for years at the Royal Albert Hall to help support the fight against Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We recorded an interview with the man himself while he was in London. The song below, Tasmim, critiques the Iranian elections of 2009. The video features two glass bowls, one filled with worms the other cockroaches as a suggestive metaphor.
