He has already established the Nava Art Centre, an academy that promotes traditional Persian music and poetry, and has acquired an entourage of enthusiastic young students. For his group of mainly twentysomething pupils, classical Persian music is a lifeline to their ancestral culture that transcends current political realities as neatly as the poetry of Rumi and Hafez offers escape from the realm of worldly struggle.
“When I play this music,” explains twenty-five-year-old Pouya Sabouri, one of Behroozinia’s best students, “it reminds me that we were once an empire. It makes me feel proud of my heritage.” Just as many Iranians look to their Zoroastrian past and its imagery winged horses, patron angels, and sacred fire as a way of celebrating an illustrious history in a less than certain present, classical music and the sung poetry of Rumi, Hafez, and Saadi offer a sense of identity far from the images of an increasingly unpopular regime.
But this new cultural identification is a nuanced one, full of a whole spectrum of greys rather than the black and white absolutism sometimes imagined by Western observers. As Behroozinia puts it, “In Iran, we have both a Zoroastrian and an Islamic heritage, and I don’t see any conflict between the two. Persian culture is so strong that no one can stop it. It will continue to grow and flourish in spite of everything.”
At a recent Shajarian concert at Vancouver’s Orpheum Theatre, the vitality of that culture is palpable. The master singers voice pierces the hearts of his listeners as his gorgeous tenor soars with the spirit of the Rumi poem he sings: “Give me a taste of the wine of union so that the door / of this eternal prison I may shatter frame by frame.”
The Iranian woman beside me weeps as Shajarian sings, his voice a transcendent instrument that caresses the quavering melodies. As his thirty-three-year-old son and protégé, Homayoun, sits beside him, and Behroozinia and four other musicians on tar, daf, kamancheh, and tombak wait on his every note, we are momentarily transported to the court of Darius. The master closes his eyes, rapt in his art. He opens his mouth, and out comes pure Persia, sung with painful longing.
While Persian classical music is inextricably linked to mystic Sufi poetry and thrived in the medieval royal courts, its fluidity and strength speak to a contemporary audience, and its stately, meditative style is combined with an emphasis on structured improvisation and vocal ornamentation. It is based on a system of musical exposition called dastgah, a set of melodic modes passed down from generation to generation. Like Turkish and Iraqi maqam, Persian classical music is mostly sung poetry. While most of the verse dates from the Middle Ages, the musical forms are said to go back some 3,000 years.
Whether Shajarian has transported his audience back millennia or simply to their prerevolutionary childhoods is unclear, but he has undoubtedly taken them on a journey.
At the end of his concert, the full house demands an encore with an enthusiastic standing ovation. When Shajarian sings “MorgheSahar” (“The Dawn Bird”), a poem written by twentieth century poet Malek o Shoara Bahar while he was in prison, the lyrics “I am a caged bird / please open the door and set me free” resonate deeply with the audience, and they cheer and clap with real passion. The few dozen non-Iranians in the audience look somewhat perplexed, and the staid Orpheum ushers are overwhelmed by the huge crowd that surrounds Shajarian and his band as they emerge into the lobby after the show.
Among the fans is Hossein Amanat, one of Iran’s best-known prerevolutionary architects, who designed Tehran’s famous Freedom Tower (originally called the Shahyad Tower “in memory of kings”). He appears deeply moved by the concert: “It makes me feel very close to this ancient culture so full of content but it makes me feel even more removed from this place.” The sixty-six-year-old Bahai, who fled Iran before the revolution, smiles thoughtfully and mentions that he is currently working on a condo tower in the suburbs.
A group of young Iranian students is among the fans who rush to catch a glimpse of their superstar. “He sings what we feel inside,” says Payman, who has driven all the way from Calgary (where he and his friends are studying engineering) just to attend the concert. Since they will return home next year, this may be one of their only opportunities to see Shajarian live in concert, as he rarely performs in Iran.
