The Art of Avaz and Mohammad Reza Shajarian by Simms Rob Koushkani Amir & Amir Koushkani

Author:Simms, Rob,Koushkani, Amir & Amir Koushkani
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780739172124
Publisher: Lexington Books, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

In observing the institutional shift of the period Zonis also noted its stifling and debilitating effects, especially the Ministry of Arts and Culture, that functioned as the engineers and gatekeepers of public musicking toward the implementation of the state’s ideology: sterile standardization, bureaucratization and micromanagement of what was hitherto a more spontaneous and organic cultural growth (1973:197ff.). Musicians had to fit into the Ministry’s policies and clique or starve.

But making a living and having an opportunity to hear music in public was not the only problem according to a contingent of stakeholders. Due to its hitherto exclusive cultivation among a small group of elite patrons and qualified musicians, Persian music faced an intrinsic dilemma when it was opened up to the public at large in the twentieth century through educational institutions and media accessibility and active government promotion: many observers close to the music felt that it was being fatally watered down in the process.

OS

Various friends who knew I loved music advised me to go to Tehran and try to get into working with the national radio. That was 1965. I had to pass the vetting process of the radio. I was examined by a jury who observed me and were astonished: I was nothing but a simple provincial guy and yet I wanted to present myself on national radio! They asked me a lot of theoretical questions about the radif to which I responded as best as I could, given that at the time I hadn’t yet gained a deep knowledge of that repertoire. Two days later I received the observations of the jury: “Pretty good but too soon for the radio.”

On the advice of a friend who was a technician, I presented producer Davud Pirnia with a cassette of my singing accompanied by Cyrus Haddadi, the ney-player for the Golhā orchestra. Pirnia agreed to listen to it. He was in the middle of writing something but when my singing began he stopped, raised his head and started to listen more attentively. After the ghazal, he lifted his eyes toward me and asked: “Is that really you who sang that?” He forwarded the tape in search of Mokhalef and Owj and then announced: “I’ll take it. Yes, I’ll take it, let’s make a broadcast. “A year later I left Khorasan for Tehran. Pirnia was no longer at the radio and I had to deal with many obstacles until I met Ostad Ebadi, whom I always regard as a relationship of father to son or master to disciple. Up to that time I never had a master for learning radif. I worked on my own and from time to time would ask the name of gushes from others.” (Kasmai and Lecomte 1991:248–50)

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