Gigging “classical” in Iran

ABSTRACT

The term “classical” is often applied to the genre of Iranian music known as musiqi-e sonnati (traditional music), normally identified by a form of music making involving extensive extemporization based on a structural framework called the radif, historically performed at length in intimate settings among initiated individuals. Today, classically trained musicians working the public concert circuit in Iran face a somewhat different picture of musical practice. Concert halls are typically much larger, audiences much wider, and performances much shorter. Many musicians tend to categorize themselves as classical, though they do not always perform according to the traditional parameters of the sonnati genre. This raises questions about new developments in classical music that fall just outside radif-based performance, and about the perceived conceptual relationship between sonnati and new-classical performance as the genre evolves. This article explores some of these dynamics through reflections among performers navigating Tehran’s classical concert circuit today.

Notes

¹ Shiloah (2001) offers a summary of the elite circles in which Iranian classical music developed through Iran’s history (pp. 95–96).

² Nooshin (2015) notes that the tradition began to be professionalized in the early 20th century, although the perception persisted for several decades, with many musicians preferring to retain their amateur status (p. 47).

³ For a discussion of the differences between sonnati and mahali music, see During et al. (1991, pp. 19–20). On pop music, see Nettl (1972) and Nooshin (2005a, 2005b).

⁴ For descriptions of the radif’s specific dastgāhs, see During et al. (1991, pp. 72–75), Farhat (1990, p. 20), Gerson-Kiwi (1963, p. 14), Miller (1999, p. 58), Nettl (1992, p. 34), Tala’i (2000, pp. vii–xi), and Zonis (1973, pp. 67–97).

⁵ For a summary of these components of a performance, see During et al. (1991, pp. 82–84).

⁶ I discuss the traditional instruction method in more detail elsewhere (Naqvi, 2012, pp. 185–188; Naqvi, 2015, pp. 47–50).

⁷ See Safvat’s discussion of this concept in Miller (1999, pp. 22–23) and, contextualized relative to Sufi mysticism, in During et al. (1991, pp. 170–171).

⁸ See Nooshin (2015, pp. 42–43). Elsewhere I suggest this can be thought of as a mode of performance in which the “hands do the thinking” (2015, p. 73; see also pp. 47–53).

⁹ I am indebted to Azadeh Keyvani for facilitating my contact with Asal Kheyradyar, and to Mehdi Semati for facilitating my contact with Ehsan Abayee, Amir Eslami, and Pooya Sarayee. I am also grateful to Elika Fallah and Shayesteh Keyvani for their assistance with translating passages from my personal communications that are cited in this chapter.

¹⁰ For a summary of questions raised about the effects on performance of broader audiences less familiar with the sonnati tradition, see (Modir, 1986, p. 67), Nooshin (2015, p. 49), and Wright (2009, p. 39).

¹¹ I also discuss this elsewhere (Naqvi, 2015, 107–110).

¹² For more detail on these evolutions in teaching practices, see Nooshin (2015, pp. 75–80).

¹³ See, for example, Nazeri’s album The Passion of Rumi (2007), Eslami and Khayam’s All of You (2010)—addressed at length in Nooshin (2015, pp. 162–177)—and Vahdat, Vahdat, and Elyasi’s I Am Eve (2008) and Vahdat and Vahdat’s Twinklings of Hope (2012).