More Classical Music of Iran

Musique Folklorique du Monde: Iran
Recorded by Deben Bhattacharya
Musidisc, CV 1115, Made in France

A month after I wrote about classical music of Iran (see previous post), I found another album dedicated to this country. It wasn't precisely a thrift store that yielded this record from a series I bought five of that day, but rather a second hand record store. Vinylarchive the store is called to be more precise, back in my old hunting grounds of Nijmegen to which I returned for a few days. I paid 5 Euros for each of the five records, well above my average range of what I spend on records. But it was worth it. It's a really great record store. If I had had more money, and records aren't so goddamn heavy to schlepp across the Atlantic, I would have bought a lot more. The series I spent €25 on is called Musique Folklorique du Monde. Besides the Iranian one (cover above) I also bought volumes featuring music from Ceylon, Bali/Java, Singapore, and Morocco. I knew they would be good because several records from the series were recorded by musicologist Deben Bhattacharya. As a follower of the blog The World's Jukebox I knew Bhattacharya's recordings pretty well. This is from that site "Born in Benares, India in 1921, Deben spent most of his life on the roads of the world, recording in small villages and cities the music of the world’s people, taking pictures and making films to help others understand better the diverse cultures he encountered. When he was not traveling, he made his home in diverse cities of Europe like London, Vienna or Paris, where he ended his well-spent life in 2001, in the Montmartre village-like neighborhood he loved so well." So Iran it is again, the pick of the litter, and again I picked the one track featuring a female vocalist. It's called Ballade, but unlike the Lomax initiated recording from the previous post, the ballad singer remains anonymous. There are no recording data at all to be found on this record. (And neither are there notes on Jukebox site's page dedicated to Rytmes et melodies d'Iran –which turns out to be the very same recordings.)

Classical Music of Iran

Classical Music of Iran, Volume One
Compiled by Ella Zonis
Folkways Records FW 8831
Made in New York, 1966

This gorgeous Folkways Records album dedicated to the classical music of Iran has been sitting on a shelf next to my record player for over a month now, waiting for the right time to post on these pages. The time is now. It's been more than a year since I last found an album by Folkways at a thrift store. It's regrettably not the most likely place to find records from that label, because the price (at 99 cents) is right. I have now 40 of the 2,168 records released through them. Folkways is my favorite label, and the shelf of my record collection dedicated to it has a most prominent place. All their records come with an informative booklet, consisting of recording data, background information, and photos. This record with music from Iran was in excellent shape but did not come with its booklet. Fortunately the Smithsonian Institute, which acquired Folkways in 1986, after founder Moses Asch's death, posted most of the booklets free for download on their site. So I know now that the dastgah at the beginning of side B was sung by Miss Khatereh Parvaneh of Shour, and that the lyrics of the song are verses from the Masnavi: "Famous mystic poetry written in the thirteenth century by Jala al-Din Rumi, the founder of the Mevlevi order of Dervishes (the 'whirling' Dervishes)". And it's this song I picked to turn into an mp3 and share with you below, all ten minutes of it.