The Persian Traditional Music Golha Project: Jane Lewisohn

Jane Lewisohn

Jane Lewisohn lived in Iran during the 1970s for six years and is a graduate of Pahalavi University, Shiraz, Iran. She has been involved in the research and promotion of various aspects of Persian Studies for the last three decades. Since 2005 she has been  directing the Golha Project under the auspices of the British Library, London, and the Music Department of SOAS, University of London. She has archived and digitalised the whole archive of the Golha radio programmes broadcast on Iranian Radio from 1956 through 1979. She is now working in collaboration with the IHF to make this Golha Archive and all the related research concerning the Golha Archive available over the internet at  http://www.golha.co.uk. (From SOAS University of London)

The Golha (‘Flowers of Persian Song and Music’) radio programmes were broadcast on Iranian National Radio for 23 years from 1956 through 1979. They comprised approximately 850 hours of programmes made up of literary commentary with the declamation of poetry, which is also sung with musical accompaniment, interspersed with solo musical pieces. The programmes themselves were the brainchild of Davoud Pirnia, a one-time Assistant Prime Minister, who in addition to being a well-known politician and judge, was an enthusiastic patriot and scholar who harboured a deep love for Persian culture and its rich literary and musical traditions. When he retired from political life in 1956, for the next eleven years he devoted himself tirelessly to producing of the Golha programmes. (By Jane Lewisohn)

Space of Resistance: The Return of the Avant-garde to the Streets of Iran

Talinn Grigor

Dr. Talinn Grigor is an Associate Professor of modern and contemporary architecture in the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University. Her research concentrates on the cross-pollination of architecture and (post)colonial politics, focused on Iran and India. Her first book, Building Iran: Modernism, Architecture, and National Heritage under the Pahlavi Monarchs (Prestel, 2009) examines the link between official architecture and heritage discourses in 20th-century Iran. Contemporary Iranian Visual Culture and Arts: Street, Studio, and Exile (Reaktion, forthcoming) explores Iranian visual culture through the premise of the art historical debate of populist versus avant-garde art that extends into the identity politics of the exile. A co-edited book with Sussan Babaie, entitled Persian Kingship and Architecture: Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis (I.B. Tauris, forthcoming), investigates the architectural legitimization of royal power through Iran’s long history. Her articles have appeared in the Art Bulletin, Getty Research Journal, Third Text, Journal of Iranian Studies, Thresholds, and DOCOMOMO among others. Past grants and fellowships include the Getty Research Institute, Cornell University, the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Soudavar Memorial Foundation, the Soros Foundation, the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute and the Aga Khan at MIT. Her present project deals with the turn-of-the-century European art-historiography and its links to eclectic-revivalistic architecture in Qajar Iran and the British Raj. (From Brandeis University).

Understanding Persian Culture through Film

The Iranian Crystal Phoenix Award

Tehran-based film critic, festival organizer and director of Iranian Independents, Mohammad Atebbai joins a panel of scholars including Dr. Kaveh Ehsani, editor and Assistant Professor of International Studies, DePaul University, Chicago; Dr. Wimal Dissanayake, Professor of Intercultural Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, East West Center; Dr. Norma Claire Moruzzi, Associate Professor of Political Science (Gender and Women's Studies) and Director, International Studies Program, University of Illinois, Chicago; and Alissa Simon, film reviewer for VARIETY and senior film programmer for the Palm Springs International Film Festival. Topics of discussion include Iranian Film History, Contemporary Iranian Urban Society, Culturally Specific and Universal Experiences, and Women in Film and Society.

Generously co-sponsored by the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute, AsiaPacificFilms, and NETPAC/USA

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.

A Taste of Rumi and Bach

Coleman Barks

Coleman Barks was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and was educated at the University of North Carolina and the University of California at Berkeley. He taught poetry and creative writing at the University of Georgia for thirty years. He is the author of numerous Rumi translations and has been a student of Sufism since 1977. His work with Rumi was the subject of an hour-long segment in Bill Moyers's Language of Life series on PBS, and he is a featured poet and translator in Bill Moyers's poetry special, "Fooling with Words." Coleman Barks is the father of two grown children and the grandfather of four. He lives in Athens, Georgia. (From Barks' official website)

Ibn 'Arabi & Rumi - Teachings for the Modern World was presented by NEW YORK OPEN CENTER and the Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi Society.