Madjid Kiani - Santour - Radif - LP released in 1977 in France

Now we continue with our Iran series. There will be two more posts after this one. Then there will be three posts by the outstanding Kemencheh master Habil Aliyev from Azerbaijan. Then a Ney cassette from Turkey, a double LP of traditional music from Tajikistan and finally an LP with music from Afghanistan. After this we will return to Indian classical music, insha'Allah. So now back to Iran:

Around the same time the two outstanding LPs by Dariush Tala'i and Majid Kiani were released on Ocora, Harmonia Mundi also released LPs by these artists. First we post the one by Majid Kiani released in 1977. These four LPs are perhaps the most beautiful ones of authentic Iranian music ever published. They were for a long time my favourite LPs and are still. Just now while preparing these posts I have listened to each of them again at least 10 times and will certainly many more times.

Regarding the term Radif, on which all classical Iranian music is based, we have included into the download files a pdf file taken from the booklet, written by the Radif master Dariush Tala'i, to the 5 CDs by him: Radif - Volume I to V, released by Al Sur in 1994 in France (ALCD 116 to 120). 

The Radif is a very refined and rich system of modes and melodies, very different from the Raga system and also the Near Eastern Maqam system. The Radif is normally never played in its entirety, except for educational reasons. The musician either chooses parts from a Dastgah of the Radif and performs them, eventually adding some improvisations and developments. Or the main body of the performance is improvisation and development based on a limited amount of selections from a Dastgah from the Radif. In order that these really turn out well with depth and meaning the musician needs a deep understanding of the Radif, which most of the contemporary and even a lot of the older musicians don't have. In effect the Radif is something, one has to dive deep into and the really good and authentic musicians never stop to do that.

Today the Radif is most times understood just as a body of modes and melodies, from which one can borrow pieces freely and then create ones own thing out of it. They don't realise that there are many meanings and secrets hidden in it and many levels of understanding, which only unfold slowly if one dives deep into it and searches to discover them. And this search never has an end. This is also true for the listener. Musicians like Majid Kiani and Dariush Tala'i are completely permeated by the Radif.

All this is described in a very detailed way by Jean During in his excellent book Musiques d'Iran - La tradition en question.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radif_(music)

flac
mp3

Iran Vol. 2 - Anthologie de la musique traditionnelle - Majid Kiani - Santur - LP published in France in 1980

Here the second volume of this marvellous anthology, this time presenting the great Radif master Majid Kiani on Santur. He made a couple of tours to Europe and I was able to attend several times concerts in Holland and in Munich and Cologne, all in the 1990s, if I remember right.

He only released two LPs and one CD in Europe, but in Iran he has quite a number of releases, especially his excellent complete Radif on 4 CDs published in 1992 and a new recording of his Radif on 4 DVDs published in 2006. This LP and the two Radifs I listened to (and watched) many many times over the years. Especially the Radif from 1992, which I was able to obtain at an Iranian Festival in Düsseldorf when it just was published, was a feast for me.

In 2016 we posted a cassette in which he accompanies the great singer Rambod Sodeyf.

On the artist see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majid_Kiani

The sheer beauty of the music of Majid Kiani leads me to another remark about authentic traditional Dastgah music of Iran: this music has a very contemplative nature, as if contemplating the beauties of nature, an amazing landscape for example, or a very refined magnificent architecture, like one of the many beautiful mosques of Persia, or the secrets of creation and its Creator, expressing and explaining secrets which can't be expressed in words. In this the music is completely detached from the human sorrows and lifts one completely out of them. And this is the mark of all real great music of the Orient: it is never sentimental or dramatic and differs in this respect greatly from modern versions of it, which are always either sentimental or dramatic or both. All this is true also of other great traditions of Oriental music as the real great Indian Raga music or the Maqam music of Uzbekistan, for example.

flac
mp3

Rambod Sodeyf (رامبد صدیف) (born 1939) & Majid Kiani - Tarji'band: Dastgah-e Chahargah - Cassette published in Iran in the 1980s

Rambod Sodeyf is one of the three greatest singers in Iran in the last 50 years, the other two being Mohammad Reza Shajarian (born 1940) and Hatam Asgari Farahani (born 1933). None of the other Iranian singers masters the vocal art of Avaz in such a complete way as these three. Shajarian is universally well known and has published over 30 CDs and a couple of DVDs. The other two are only known to some connoisseurs. Hatam Asgari Farahani insisteded up to recently that his privately done recordings should be exclusively for his students. Only recently the legendary Iranian label Mahoor published four CDs (partly boxes of several CDs). All these CDs and DVDs can be obtained outside of Iran from: info@raga-maqam-dastgah.com. We posted a set of four cassettes by Hatam Asgari (Askari) Farahani in 2011 here. Recently we also posted a cassette by Shajarian here.

Rambod Sodeyf always refused to be recorded. As far as I know the reason seems to be that he is convinced, as also Hatam Asgari Farahani, that the exquisit art of Iranian Avaz (classical non-metric vocal improvisation) is an art which has to be recreated in each performance newly and therefore should not be fixed, neither by being written down nor by recordings. Only once, the great Santur player Majid Kiani was able to convince Sodeyf to make a recording with him. This is the recording we present here.

Luckily there is one more recording, done by WDR, the Western German broadcasting, which recorded in 1992 a concert in Cologne. This one we will post next.

It is a pity that there are no other recordings. At least now in his old age he should consent to be recorded, as otherwise his music will get lost once he passes away. But maybe there are some good Mehfil recordings or a Radif which might emerge one day.

Rambod Sodeyf has learned from some of the greatest singers of the 20th century: the outstanding Soleyman Amir Qasemi (Ghasemi) (1884-1976), also known as Salim Khan, the towering Eqbal Azar (1866-1970) and the great Radif teacher Abdollah Davami (1891-1980). CDs by these singers can be obtained from: info@raga-maqam-dastgah.com.
Here is a link from which one can download some other concert recordings by Sodeyf, unfortunately in poor sound quality: http://www.sardroud.blogfa.com/post-68.aspx.
He has his own music school in Ardebil in Iranian Azerbaijan.

wave

mp3