Dariush Shayegan Talks about the Golden Age of Iranian Culture and How to Revive it (Global Dialogue Prize 2009's Speech)

Dariush Shayegan

Dariush Shayegan (born in 1935 in Tehran) (Persian: داریوش شایگان) is one of Iran's prominent thinkers, cultural theorists and comparative philosophers.

Shayegan studied at Sorbonne University in Paris. He was a Professor of Sanskrit and Indian religions at Tehran University.

He wrote a novel "Land of Mirage" in French which won the ADELF award presented by the Association of French Authors on December 26, 2004. According to the Persian daily Aftab, Shayegan is well known in France for his books in the field of philosophy and mysticism.

Shayegan, who studied with Henry Corbin in Paris, also did many pioneering works on Persian mysticism and mystic poetry. He was a founding director of the Iranian Center for the Studies of Civilizations. In 1977, Shayegan initiated an international symposium on the "dialogue between civilizations," a concept that has been selectively appropriated by the former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami. In 2009 Shayegan was awarded the inaugural Global Dialogue Prize, an international award for "outstanding achievements in the advancement and application of intercultural value research", in recognition of his dialogical conception of cultural subjectivity.

GEES (TRESSES) by Mohsen Namjoo

THE NON CONFORMIST…

Namjoo’s unconventional approach to the dogma of traditional music in formal institutions pushed him out of the mainstream where he found a vast audience with his debut album Toranj. He single handedly took on the mainstream on several fronts transforming the traditional persian style into a modern rendition that attracted younger generations while simultaneously blending with western traditions of Rock and Blues. Namjoo did not stop with his great success as a musician and began to take on the dogma of traditional music lyrically. First with unconventional renditions of classical and neo-classical persian poetry and gradually with his own sophisticated, yet youthful and approachable sense of word play. There are no other examples of the Namjoo phenomenon in the contemporary Persian music scene. Given the circumstances in Iran, it is only natural that an artist like him would be lucky to find himself outside of the country, far from the hands of repression.

Mohsen Namjoo continues to connect with the hearts and souls of music lovers throughout the world. Payam Entertainment is proud to present a series of new albums in the coming months and launch a North American tour of Namjoo in “A Minor”, a major live production with his ensemble band.

Hailed as “the Bob Dylan of Iran” by the New York Times, Mohsen Namjoo is a visionary artist who speaks for and touches the souls of today’s youth. Seamlessly blending the Classical with the Modern, the Eastern with the Western, the ancient with the current, Mohsen Namjoo is a musical maverick. A Non-conformist who not only takes on the centuries old traditions of Persian music, but also his own approach to composition, style and sound. Namjoo in “A Minor” showcases his mastery as a vocalist, composer and Setar player with a full ensemble band of talented artists to create a truly unparalleled musical experience for those who think “World Music Is Not Enough”! (From Mosen Namjoo's official website) 

Mohsen Namjoo

About "Gees (Tresses)":

Squeezing the ancient tunes of traditional Iranian music out of a guitar, Mohsen Namjoo -- called by some the “Iranian Bob Dylan“, performs his one-man show in an underground concert. His music evokes a merry vibration thumping under the coat of solemnity the streets of Tehran are wrapped with. The piece that starts with a typical image in mystic Persian poetry -- the beloved’s flying black locks, with “beloved” connoting the Creator. The poetic cliché breaks into pieces when the register of the language is all of a sudden catapulted into a colloquial Farsi, of frequent chat-up lines and borrowed Western words like “blonde.” The burlesque ends with a sarcastic one-word finale lamentingly trilled in a traditional mode: “hairdryer.” The creaky frame of strict traditionalism caging the range of guitar strings and the naturalism of informal modern Farsi is symbolic of the worn wobbly social and political structures which continue to awkwardly contain the liveliness of a pragmatic people. (From "Drums of War Muffling Iranian Moderates" by Amir Azizmohammadi)

The Queen and I by Nahid Persson Sarvestani, 2008 (Swedish)

Nahid Persson Sarvestani (born 1960 in Shiraz, Iran) is an award-winning Iranian-Swedish filmmaker and director.

Her most famous documentary films are Prostitution Behind the Veil, My Mother - A Persian Princess, The End of Exile, and The Last Days of Life.

In November 2008, Persson Sarvestani finished the production of The Queen and I, a 90-minute documentary in which the director's year-long, complex relationship with the Iranian former Empress Farah Pahlavi is examined. The film had its North American premiere at Sundance Film Festival in 2009.

Persson Sarvestani has received several awards for her films. The Last Days of Life received the Swedish Cancer Foundation's (Cancerfondens) Journalist Prize in 2002. The film Prostitution Behind The Veil received an International Emmy nomination, as well as the Golden Dragon at the Krakow Film Festival, Best International News Documentary at the TV-festival 2005 in Monte Carlo, as well as The Crystal Award (Kristallen) by SVT (Swedish State Television) and the Golden Scarab (Guldbaggen) by the Swedish Film Institute in 2005.

Persson Sarvestani also shares TCO's (Tjänstemännens Centralorganisation) 2005 Cultural Prize with the author Marjaneh Bakhtiari. (From Wikipedia)

Swedish-Iranian film director Nahid Persson Sarvestani

Farah Pahlavi (Farah Diba; Persian: فرح دیبا Faraḥ Dība) born 14 October 1938, Tehran, Farah is the former Queen and Empress of Iran. She is the widow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, and only Empress (Shahbanu) of modern Iran. She was Queen consort of Iran from 1959 until 1967 and Empress consort from 1967 until exile in 1979. ((From Wikipedia)



Empress Farah Pahlavi

                   

Valiasr (Pahlavi) Street, Tehran

Valiasr Street (Persian: ولی عصر ) is a tree-lined street in Tehran, Iran, dividing the metropolis into western and eastern parts. It is considered one of Tehran's main thoroughfares and commercial centres. It is also the longest street in the Middle East, and was reported as one of the longest in the world by former BBC (now Al Jazeera) journalist Rageh Omaar during the television documentary Welcome to Tehran.

The street was built by Reza Shah Pahlavi's order and called the Pahlavi Street. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution the street's name was changed initially to Mossadeq Street (in reference to former nationalist prime minister Mohammad Mossadeq) and later to Valiasr (a reference to the 12th Shi'ite Imam). Valiasr Street is the hub of different activities in Tehran and innumerable shops and restaurants as well a large number of parks (like Mellat Park), highways, cultural centers are situated along this long avenue.

Valiasr runs from the Tehran's railway station (1117 meters elevation above see level) in the south of the city

to the Tajrish square (1612 meters elevation above see level) in the north.

Valiasr runs for 12 miles (19.3 kilometers), north to south, and is filled with traffic at all hours, even until the early hours of the morning. The shops stay open late and the kiosks sell fresh fruit juice, coffee and newspapers. (From Wikipedia)




Valiasr (Pahlavi) Street, Tehran

 

Gholam Ali Pouratayee, Khorasan Music

Maestro Gholam Ali Pouratayee is one of the biggest names in the history of traditional Khorasani music. He lives in Torbat Jam.

Gholam Ali Pouratayee

Greater Khorasan or Ancient Khorasan (Persian: خراسان کهن یا خراسان بزرگ) (also written Khurasan) is a historical region spanning what are now northeastern Iran, most of Afghanistan, and the southern parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikstan. The name "Khorasan" is derived from Middle Persian khor (meaning "sun") and asan (or ayan literally meaning "to come" or "coming"), hence meaning "land where the sun rises". The Persian word Khāvar-zamīn (Persian: خاور زمین), meaning "the eastern land", has also been used as an equivalent term.

Khorasan in its proper sense comprised principally the cities of Nishapur and Tus (now in Iran), Balkh and Herat (now in Afghanistan), Merv (now in Turkmenistan), and Samarqand and Bukhara (now in Uzbekistan). However, the name has been used in the past to cover a larger region that encompassed most of Transoxiana and Soghdiana in the north, extended westward to the Caspian Sea, southward to include the Sistan desert and eastward to the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan. Arab geographers even spoke of its extending to the boundaries of ancient India, possibly as far as the Indus valley, in what is now Pakistan. Sources from the 14th to the 16th century report that Kandahar, Ghazni and Kabul in Afghanistan formed the frontier region between Khorasan and Hindustan.

In the Islamic period, Persian Iraq and Khorasan were the two important territories. The boundary between these two was the region surrounding the cities of Gurgan and Damghan. In particular, the Ghaznavids, Seljuqs and Timurids divided their empires into Iraqi and Khorasani regions. The adjective Greater is added these days to distinguish the historical region from the Khorasan province of Iran, which roughly encompasses the western half of the historical Khorasan. It is also used to indicate that ancient Khorasan encompassed a loose collection of territories individually known by other popular names, such as Bactria, Khwarezmia, Sogdiana, Transoxiana, and Sistan or Arachosia.

Torbat-e Jām is an ancient city in the Razavi Khorasan state in north-eastern Iran. It is about 160 kilometres (99 miles) southwest of Mashhad, about 60 kilometres (35 miles) north of Taybad, and about 40 kilometres (25 miles) west of the Afghanistan border. There are many ancient places there, like the mazar (tomb) of Sheikh Ahmad Jami and Prince Ghasem Anvar. It includes many villages, such as Bezd, Mahmoodabad, Nilshahr. (From Wikipedia)

Here is a vocal performance by Gholam Ali Pouratayee accompanied by his legendary dutar.

One (1 take in 1 minute with Abbas Kiarostami) by Jorge Tur 2006



Abbas Kiarostami

Abolfazl Jalili Talks about His "A True Story" (French subtitles)



Abolfazl Jalili



 

Abolfazl Jalili (Persian: ابوالفضل جلیلی , born 1957 in Saveh, Iran) is an internationally acclaimed Iranian (Persian) film director. He belongs to Iranian new wave movement. Jalili studied directing at the Iranian College of Dramatic Arts, then worked for national television (IRIB) where he produced several children's films. His 'Det' Means Girl (1994) won prizes in Venice film festival and Nantes. He was one of Rotterdam's Film Makers in Focus in 1999.

Nasir al-Din al-Tusi: Images

Khawaja Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ḥasan Ṭūsī (Persian: محمد بن محمد بن الحسن طوسی) (born 18 February 1201 in Ṭūs, Khorasan – 26 June 1274 in al-Kāżimiyyah, Baghdad), better known as Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī (Persian: نصیر الدین طوسی‎; or simply Tusi in the West), was a Persian polymath and prolific writer: an astronomer, biologist, chemist, mathematician, philosopher, physician, physicist, scientist, theologian and Marja Taqleed. The Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) considered Tusi to be the greatest of the later Persian scholars. (From Wikipedia)

CHARGAN Ensemble Persian Strings Quartet: Agitation by Hamed Afshari

CHARGAN Ensemble Persian Strings Quartet
By: Hamed Afshari
Kamancheh: Ehsan Zabihifar, Morteza Mokhtari
Qaychak Alto: Shima Shahmohammadi
Qaychak Bass: Hamed Afshari

Chargan

Silk Road Project: Kayhan Kalhor Talks about the Kamancheh

Woman playing the kamancheh in a painting from
the Hasht Behesht Palace in Isfahan Persia, 1669.

Kayhan Kalhor (Persian: كيهان كلهر), born 1963, is an Iranian kamancheh player, composer and master of classical Persian music.He is from a Kurdish family.

Kayhan Kalhor was born in Tehran. He began studying music at the age seven. By the age of thirteen he was playing in the National Orchestra of Radio and Television of Iran. Continuing his music studies under various teachers, he studied in the Persian radif tradition and also travelled to study in the northern part of Khorasan province, where music traditions have Kurdish and Turkic influences as well as Persian. At a musical conservatory in Tehran around age 20 Kalhor worked under the directorship of Mohammad-Reza Lotfi who is from Northern Khorasan. Kalhor also travelled in the northwestern (Kurdish) provinces of Iran. He later moved to Rome and Ottawa to study European classical music.

The kamānche or kamāncha (Persian: کمانچه ) is a Persian bowed string instrument related to the bowed rebab, the historical ancestor of the kamancheh and also to the bowed lira of the Byzantine Empire, ancestor of the European violin family. The strings are played with a variable-tension bow: the word "kamancheh" means "little bow" in Persian (kæman, bow, and -cheh, diminutive). It is widely used in the classical music of Iran, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, with slight variations in the structure of the instrument. (From Wikipedia)