Mohamad Reza Shajarian in Melbourne

In Mohamad Reza Shajarian to tour Australia I foreshadowed the Australian tour of the internationally renowned master of Persian classical music Mohamad Reza Shajarian, accompanied by the amazing Shahnaz Ensemble, led by Majid Derakhshani, membership of which includes Shajarian’s daughter Mojgan, who sings as well as playing the setaar.

On the evening of Saturday 1 May my wife, a friend and I had the pleasure of attending Shajarian’s Melbourne performance, at the Dallas Brooks Centre.  It was a wonderful occasion, an opportunity to sample some of the rich musical heritage of Persia, played at a standard that has achieved international recognition; Shajarian received a UNESCO Picasso award in 1999 and was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best World Music in 2004 and 2006.

Although Shajarian is a practitioner of Persian classical music, writing settings of lyrics by the great Persian poets, careful selection of words that suit the times enable him to tap into the feelings of, and give hope to, those who are not entirely at ease with the current Iranian regime.  To put it into a context familiar to us, if I say

But if the cause be not good ... it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it ...

I am not criticising John Howard’s decision to invade Iraq, how could anyone think such a thing, I am simply quoting Shakespeare’s Henry V.

So when Shajarian sings poetry by the fourteenth century Persian lyric poet Hāfez, he has the opportunity to draw on poetry familiar to all, the major themes of which are not only love, the celebration of wine and intoxication, but also the hypocrisy of those who have set themselves up as guardians, judges and examples of moral rectitude.  The regime mightn’t like it, but what can they say?

For those who like to measure a musician’s pulling power in coin of the realm, when I came to book our tickets I was surprised and disappointed to find that the best seats in the house clocked in at a little over $A300. We let those go by, and got good seats for considerably less than that. But we were close enough to the action to see that the $300 seats were all occupied.

The concert was well attended, but I as far as I could tell our party, plus a lone friend of our friend, were the only non-Iranians present; certainly the only English we heard spoken was our own conversation or when other attendees spoke to us, as they did.  So it was not so much a multicultural event as a mono-cultural event in a great multicultural city, which is a bit of a pity because great music is great music and the opportunity to hear it at world-class standard is not to be missed.

At the interval some Iranian ladies sitting in front of us turned to chat. They asked us whether we spoke any Farsi, and when we said no, and that it was a pity because we would have liked to know more about the music and what was being sung.  They explained the meaning of the various songs that we had heard in the first half – this song was a setting of a poem by Hāfez  etc. Very gracious and courteous people, who seemed to welcome our presence and our willingness to appreciate music which they obviously loved.

The evening finished with a couple of encores, the last of which we were told is always heard. It is a song of freedom, which dates from the time of the movement which brought parliamentary democracy to Iran in 1906 - who could object to that? It was clear that Shajarian and friends were not going to be permitted to leave until this had been sung, and its reception was enormous.

For Sydney readers, it is not too late – Shajarian’s Australian tour ends with a performance at the Enmore Theatre on Saturday 16 May –bookings accessible from the Persian Information Hub here.

On completion of their Australian tour, Shajarian and the Shanhnaz Ensemble will travel to North America for performances in Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, Huston, Seattle, Berkeley, Los Angeles, Vancouver and Toronto.

Kytherans in Armidale

James Belshaw has posted on his New England, Australia blog a couple of posts on the Greeks in Australia, with some recollections of the Greek cafes in our school and university days in Armidale (1950s and 60s) – see Newcastle, Niagara and the Greeks in Australia and Belshaw's World - Armidale’s Greek community, which latter first appeared as a column in The Armidale Express on 2 December 2009.

Among the leaders of that cafe culture that provided meeting places for literally generations of secondary and tertiary students, in a town in which education was one of the key drivers of the local economy, the Comino family with its IXL Cafe in Beardy Street must take pride of place. Nick’s cafe, founded between the wars by Nick Feros, was another important drop-in centre. Comino’s and Nick’s were part of the fabric of Armidale life – without them it would have been a different place, and our lives would have been different.

The first Comino foothold in Armidale was established in 1903 when the Cordatos brothers, 22-year-old Kyriakos and 21-year-old Anthony, built an establishment on behalf of Comino and Panaretto, next to the New England Hotel.  The Feros brothers were there from the early 1920s, and the Tzannes brothers were there by the late 1930s. In the heyday of Armidale’s Greek community in the 1950s and 60s there were about 300 residents, predominantly of Kytheran descent.

Knowing that the Cominos were originally from Kythera I decided to do a little research on the web and came up with a gem of a site – Kythera Family Net, which contains posts in English covering the Kytheran diaspora worldwide. As Kytherans were the start of the migration chain from Greece to Sydney, and at the start of World War II still constituted 22% of the Greek community in Australia, it is a rich source of the history of a community that has contributed so much to who we are today.

For people who are interested in the New England region it is especially rich, because in the mid-20th century Kytherans constituted 75% of the Greek population of Northern New South Wales. For those interested in Armidale and district I would recommend this post by Peter Tsicalas.

For those interested in some more general background on Kytheran migration to Australia, Peter Tsicalis’s Settlement in Australia is a good place to start.

For the Australian Dictionary of Biography’s entry on the man who started it all, Athannasio Comino (1844?-1987), see here.

Turkish pop on iTunes

People with a stereotyped image of Islamic societies might be surprised to hear that Turkey has long had a vigorous popular music scene, led by some outstanding female stars.

I got an inkling of this when I went to Istanbul in 1977 as an Australian delegate to the World Energy Conference’s quadrennial meeting. One evening I saw some very presentable local 1970s music played in one of the hotels by a live band with a female vocalist.

A day or two later I decided during one particularly tedious session that staying until the end thereof was not likely to make a better person of me but a long walk through the streets of Istanbul might.

Good thinking. I exited the Atatürk Cultural Centre and headed off. I soon found myself walking in a very dimly lit shopping street; Turkey was in the grip of a balance of payments crisis, and was behind in its payments to Bulgaria for bulk electricity. The Bulgarians had cut their supplies right back, and blocks of the city were being blacked out in sequence for two hours at a time. The shopkeepers’ response to this was to start up an auxiliary generator and run about one fluorescent light per shop.

I entered a record shop and told the proprietor I would like to buy a recording of Turkey’s leading female popular singer – whom would he recommend?

He had the proper retailing spirit and produced two LPs, one of Emel Sayın (Emel Sayın 76), and one of Neşe Karaböcek (Dünden Bugüne, released in 1977). The former he said was the big seller of the moment, the latter rising rapidly in the charts. I took them both.

My verdict: Neşe was good, no doubt about it, but Emel was truly great. This is a woman with a very strong voice, good voice control and amazingly clear diction – a product of serious musical education and voice training. She had a substantial career in Turkish movies as well, from 1970 to 1980. She was one of the stars of a genuinely Turkish genre of popular music, which emerged in the 1970s to dominate a pop music scene which had progressed from cover versions of Western songs, to new Turkish lyrics to Western songs, to a new “Arabesk” indigenous style of which Emel was a leading exponent.

Her career also tracked the emergence of new media – she went from success in an open ‘Voice of the Queen’ competition run by Hurriet News Agency to her first casino appearance at age 17, then seven years of live onstage performances with Ankara Radio, followed by Istanbul Radio, and by the start of the 1970s her first LPs were beginning to appear – often in the early 1970s in the form of annual albums like the abovementioned Emel Sayın 76.

A couple of years after making this discovery I found myself in a Turkish area of Frankfurt and saw in a shop window a handful of Turkish audio cassettes, with an indication that these could be obtained from a shop on the fourth floor. I climbed into a creaky old lift with its classic steel mesh concertina door, and emerged into a shop which sold a great array of Turkish bric-a-brac including a number of audio cassettes. No-one seemed to speak any English, so I simply selected four cassettes and purchased them. Not a bad hit rate, I thought: three performers who were quite enjoyable (Serap Mutlu, Sevda Deniz and Biricik) and one megastar, the amazing Sezen Aksu, singer, songwriter and producer who sold over 40 million albums worldwide. Although like Emel Sayın she had a classical Turkish musical training, Sezen Aksu sings in a style closer to Western popular music, starting her career with the cover versions of Western songs, and then original compositions in the Western style, known as “arrangements” (Arajmanlar). As a songwriter, composer and performer she churned out hit after hit, and is one of the most celebrated Turkish pop stars of all time.

As it happened the audio tape I purchased, Arajmanlar 3, contained the two sides of the hit single Olmaz Olsun/Vurdumduymaz (Wish it never happened/Insensitive) that first took her to number 1 in the charts in 1976, after which her career never looked back.

She helped others to fame as well, penning for pop singer Tarkan the songs Simarik and Sikidim with which he topped the charts in several European countries – without singing in English. Sertab Erener, another protégée of Aksu, won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2003.

On 7 October 2007 she gave a concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, only the second Turkish pop singer to do so. The asking price for the best tickets in this 5,000 seat hall was £80 per head. Restricted view Circle tickets £35.

Fortunately it is no longer necessary to journey to Istanbul or Turkish neighbourhoods of Frankfurt and acquire vinyl records or audio tapes of indifferent manufacturing quality in order to hear these wonderful singers – all you have to do is go to the iTunes store and know what to look for.

If you put “Emel” into the search engine it will return Emel Sayın at the top of the list, and by selecting that you will be given the choice of six albums downloadable for $16.99 each. I have downloaded Emel Sayın 2: Turki Filmi Musiki and it is well up to standard. As it happens it has four tracks from the original Emel Sayın 76 I purchased all those years ago, any one of which I can recommend:

- Seni Ne Çok Sevdiğimi

- Gönül Hasta

- Unuttun Mu Askımıza Ettiğin Yemini

- Içimde Kim Vardır

So now I can hear them in better sound quality than ever. If you feel like giving it a try, don’t bother with the 30-second grabs, they don’t do justice to this music; lash out and buy a track or two (e.g. the first and last of the above – if after a few hearings you don’t like them then maybe this music is not for you), or better still download the whole album.

Unfortunately there is nothing from Sezen Aksu’s brilliant career that goes back to Arajmanlar 3, which has some truly wonderful songs on it – the haunting Allahaısmarladık (Goodbye), or the passionate Yaşanmamış Yıllar - but there is plenty to choose from on iTunes.

Persian classical music in Melbourne

Australia is a country of small surprises. What was surprising about the performance by the Mehr Ensemble at the Melba Hall on Saturday 25 July (see Persian Classical Music at Melba Hall) was not the quality of the music, nor the quality of the musicianship, but the extent of the local content, the extent to which this wonderful musical tradition seems to be taking root here. Three of the five musicians are residents or habitués of Melbourne, a fourth is here temporarily doing some work with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

The program had many high moments. One of the more striking was a solo by Toofan Toghyani on the Daf, an instrument thought to have been used in Sufi ceremonies; imagine a large tambourine-like instrument (80-90 cm diameter) with the metal rings inside rather than penetrating the frame. Nominally suspended between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, it seemed more to be suspended by the complex rhythms of the fingers, almost floating in front of the performer. By the time this was approaching its climax, a good proportion of the audience was half out of its chair.

The audience reaction to the whole program was very enthusiastic, and at the end the applause went on and on, the entire audience on its feet.

All this took place in a building resonant with Australia’s achievements in the Western classical tradition – the foundation stone laid by Dame Nellie Melba in 1909, the portraits of Dame Nellie and Louise Hanson-Dyer, founder of Paris-based Les Editions l’Oiseau-Lyre, the photograph of Percy Grainger, the museum for whom is undergoing renovation on the adjscent plot at Melbourne University.

This is what we are told about the Mehr Ensemble and the individual musicians in the program notes:

The Mehr Ensemble

The Mehr Ensemble was principally formed by specialised musicians for specific projects and compositional pieces. The flexibility within the ensemble is fundamentally the use of relevant instruments which are suitable for the performance of particular music pieces and arrangements depending upon the composition and projects at hand.

The Mehr Ensemble began in Tehran, Iran in the year of 1999 by Pooya Mehman Pazir and has continued its active operation to date. The masters of this ensemble are currently skilled instrumentalists in their own fields and the ensemble members may increase and vary depending upon projects and tours.

The focus of this ensemble is to create new revelations in the light and framework of Persian ancient Radif musical systems with embedded energy which is intended to lift the soul and the hearts of the lovers of cultural music.

The current members and the infrastructure of this group are: Pooya Mehman Pazir, group leader and instrumentalist on the Tar and Setar, Mehdi Mirzaei, vocals, Samira Karimi, Kamanche and Setar and Toofan Toghyani, Daf, Dayareh and Ney.

The focus of the Mehr Ensemble is purely aimed at creating music which is highly filtered and fine tuned to high standards, irrespective of ensemble size. To create complex musical pieces in pure form and create a new dimension to sounds that effect both human soul and spirit.

Pooya Mehman Pazir

Born in Shiraz (Iran) in the year of 1977, Pooya showed interest in music from early childhood and embarked on playing the Setar. Progressively improving his techniques and knowledge in traditional Iranian musical model systems, at the age of 15 he commenced professional training under the supervision of music masters such as Master Behnam Vadani simultaneously brushing up on techniques on the instrument Tar. Pooya successfully passed the mandatory stringent examinations required by the institutions and met all necessary prerequisites, gaining entrance to the Art University of Tehran at the age of 22.

Completing the 4 year course he obtained his bachelor in music and was offered 3^rd national postgraduate position (out of 5 offered) in the field of composition.

During the process of his tertiary education Pooya obtained valuable knowledge on instrument techniques from: Behnam Vadani, Mohamad Reza Ebrahimi, Darioush Talai, Mehrbanu Tofiq, and the theory of music and composition from Hoseyn Dehlavi, Sharif Lotfi, Amir Eslami, Siavash Beyzai.

Pooya began performing with the “Sepidar” and Art University Ensembles as well as the Austrian cultural consulate choir from the year of 2000 in a number of noteworthy concerts in renown venues of Iran.

Having established the “Mehr” ensemble in Tehran and after migrating to Australia in 2006, he is continuing activities with relevant members in Melbourne, his primary focus remains in creating compositions of unique nature. He has also worked in conjunction with Radio and Television in Tehran and composed music for films and theatres as well as teaching in the Art University of Tehran since 2002, and voluntarily in the school of “Asaye sepid” for the blind.

Pooya actively teaches students theory and instrumental techniques in traditional Persian music both privately and at the institute of the Iranian Cultural and Arts Society of Victoria.

Pooya currently leads the Mehr Ensemble in progressive projects and forthcoming concerts and repertoires.

Mehdi Mirzaei

Born in Tehran in 1972, Mehdi became interested in Persian traditional music from early childhood.

Following his passion and interest in the realm of music he commenced training at the age of 15 on his own singing known songs. At the age of 18 he began professional training under the supervision of Master Shapoor Rahimi for a number of years focusing on traditional modal systems (Radif-e Avazi) in vocal techniques.

Continuing his intense training he followed onto participation in solfege and music theory under the supervision of Mrs. Soodabe Shams, one of the well recognised and respected masters of solfege and musical theory of Tehran.

His in-depth understanding and perception in Persian literature and poetry was obtained from his correlations with Master Mohamad Reza Ahmadian.

He has participated in a number of concerts in Iran and Australia a solo vocalist and is well recognised nationally for his techniques in singing and fluidity of his voice.

Toofan Toghyani

Toofan was born in Tehran in 1978. He embarked on his study of Persian music from the age of nine, under the supervision of Master Khaledi, training in the Iranian classical style piano. Subsequent to his migration to Australia, at the age of thirteen he continued his own familiarisation and study of Iranian classical, folk and Sufi music.

Toofan was tremendously seduced by the immense strength and depth of his exploration and he began the learning of the Ney, deriving techniques as played by master Ney players, Mohamad Mousavi, Mohamad Reza Kiani Nezhaad and Jamshid Andalibi.

Journeying deeper towards the magnetic attraction of Persian Sufi music, he began a very intense training in the playing of the Daf.

Toofan has since performed Persian Sufi and classical style music pieces, participated in movie soundtracks (Serenades) and performed in concerts, festivals, TV and radio programs with Master Musicians and singers such as Sivan Perwer, Davod Azad and Habibolah Badi’ee in renown venues internationally such as Volks Theater in Vienna, Graz, Paris, Oslo, Moscow, Almati, Hamburg, London, Toronto, Ottawa and Australian venues and events such as the International Arts Festival at the Sydney Opera House.

Having established superior techniques and his own distinct adroitness and style on Daf and Ney Toofan is a well-respected Iranian musician internationally.

Toofan is now actively involved in concerts and musical events and tours with the Mehr Ensemble, Sivan Perwer and Davod Azad internationally.

Samira Karimi

Born in the north of Iran in 1980, Samira began her journey in the path of music in early childhood.

With a gifted voice, and passion to express her love in music, she began vocal training in 1994 and at the age of 10 she was playing the Setar and went on to playing the Kemanche.

With professional training and music theory, Persian classical style singing and harmony under the supervision of Masters Sharif Lotfi and Amir Eslami and training of Setar at the school of Master Zolfonoon, she is a special up and coming talent in the realm of Persian music with much to offer in her vocal techniques and in the instruments she plays.

She has been active in renown ensembles such as Sepidar, Tehran University Chorus (official ensemble) and is currently working with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

Joel Christian Cerdor

Joel Christian Cerdor was born in Melbourne in 1985. At an early age Joel moved to many different small towns around Australia and befriended many individuals from various cultures predominantly from the Middle Eastern region. Having developed a liking for the culture and music of the Middle East, he listened to world music from a young age and proceeded onto learning classical guitar from his father Christian Cerdor.

Having researched music of many different countries, he discovered Persian music by listening to Masters Shajarian and Lotfi and this became the point at which he directed his life, love and focus towards Persian classical music.

In search of a teacher who could assist him in the learning of Setar he met Pooya Mehman Pazir who has been assisting him in the learning of Setar, Tar and Bamtar as well as training in the theory of Iranian Radif.

Being from a non Persian background, people have found that there is an element of surprise and depth hidden in his capability of playing these instruments.

He is currently a member of the Mehr Ensemble and plans on furthering his journey in Persian music by going to Iran.

Japanese Restaurant: Yu-u, 137 Flinders Lane

Sampled tonight for the first time, on about the fourth attempt, having been booked out on the first three occasions, Yu-u Japanese Restaurant, at 137 Flinders Lane Melbourne.

The Age Good Food Guide gives this restaurant 15/20, which means that it is awarded one hat. The rating is richly deserved. As one would hope and expect in a good Japanese restaurant, the food is impeccably fresh and cooked to perfection.

Do not feel bad about yourself if you cannot find it; the entrance is, shall we say, rather discreet. I turned up at the designated address, and with the benefit of having consulted Google Maps, and couldn’t see it for the life of me. I walked up and down Flinders Lane a bit, gave up and went and consulted the concierge at the Hyatt, returned armed with further information, and still had trouble. Look for a red door covered in graffiti, set in an unprepossessing wall covered in graffiti, with a tiny sign on the architrave. This wall and door are actually in Oliver Lane, right on the corner with Flinders Lane.

Step through that door and down the stairs and you are in another world. Well worth a try.