Persian HipHop 021 to LDN: Reveal Poison at TEDxBathUniversity

Reveal Poison

Reveal Poison is an Iranian born, London raised hip-hop artist, writer and ethnomusicologist. Growing up while travelling back and forth between such contrasting urban environments as Tehran and London has provided him with a sense of dual identity for most of his life. He is currently studying Mmus Ethnomusicology at SOAS.

www.myspace.com/revealpoison

In this TED Talk, Reveal Poison presents a short history of Iranian hip hop and Persian rap. In this account,  he talks about how underground Iranian rappers borrowed African-American rap but Iranified the tunes through employing Iranian musical instruments, tapping to old traditions of Persian poetry to write their  songs, and adding a Persian mystic colour to their music. Reveal Poison, in this presentation, speaks about the process of shaping Persian rap from the point of view of an insider, a short history of the foundation of Persian rap by a Persian-British rapper.

Bushehri Music and Dance in Louvre Museum: A Performance by Shanbehzadeh Ensemble



Persian Gulf Coast in Bushehr



Bushehr (Persian:بوشهر /Būšehr/), pop. 165,377 (in 2005), is a city on the southwestern coast of Iran, on the Persian Gulf. It is the chief seaport of the country and the administrative centre of Bushehr province. Its location is 28° 59' N, 50° 49' E, about 1,281 kilometres (796 mi) south of Tehran. The local climate is hot and humid.  (From Wikipedia)



Shanbehzadeh Ensemble

Shanbehzadeh Ensemble (Persian: گروه شنبه زاده) is an Iranian folk band, formed in Bushehr in 1990. The band offers a rare aspect of the traditional music and dance of the Persian Gulf, more specially of the province of Bushehr, south of Iran and bordering Persian gulf.

The principal instruments of the ensemble are the neyanbān (bagpipe), neydjofti (flute), dammām (drum), zarbetempo (percussion), traditional flute, senj (cymbal) and boogh (a goat’s horn). The Ensemble has delighted audience in Iran, Europe and North-America. (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)

Ali Asghar Bahari

Ostad Ali Asghar Bahari (1905 – June 10, 1995) was an Iranian musician and kamancheh player. He was born in Tehran and started his music lessons under his grand father Mohammad Taghi Khan, who was a kamancheh player as well. After three years, his father sent him to his uncles to learn more advanced techniques. Asghar had three uncles (all mother's brothers): Akbar, Reza and hassan. They were all famous kamancheh players. His first major success was with Ebrahim Khan Mansouri's Orchestra at the age of 18. He started his own music school in Mashhad, then he moved back to Tehran and became an kamancheh instructor in Honarestan under Ruhollah Khaleghi. He played with most famous Iranian musician such as Hossein Tehrani, Ahmad Ebadi, and Abolhasan Saba. He also was a professor of music in Tehran University for a few years. He toured France, Belgium, Germany' Italy' England and the United States. He died in Tehran. (From Wikipedia)