a two-part evening of passionate music and dance from Iran

Ali Akbar Moradi and Pejman Hadadi: Kurdish Music of Iran

Banafsheh Sayyad & Namah Ensemble:
Contemporary Mystical Persian Dance

December 16, 2000 at 8PM
Schoenberg Hall, UCLA

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Ethnomusicology, School of Arts & Architecture, UCLA

This two part evening brings together sacred traditional Kurdish music previously heard only in closed Sufi gatherings with contemporary Persian dance based in Sufi teachings and practice. The first half of the evening is devoted to Ali Akbar Moradi, the extraordinary tanbur player from Kurdistan of Iran. He is a leading composer, teacher and consummate performer of sacred Kurdish music. His many awards include two honorary diplomas at major music festivals in Iran. Moradi has performed as a soloist and with ensembles in festivals throughout the world. He is joined by Pejman Hadadi, a “virtuoso” daf and tombak player, hailed as “the finest Iranian percussionist living in the West” (KPFA Radio, Berkeley). Hadadi has toured N. America, Europe and Iran as a member of Dastan Ensemble, the leading ensemble of Persian music, and performed with masters Hossein Alizadeh, Hossein Omoumi and Parisa.

The tanbur is the ancestor of most long-necked, plucked stringed instruments. It has 14 gut frets, and its soundboard, made of mulberry wood has numerous small holes for optimal resonance. It has a unique playing technique whereby the strings are strummed across the soundboard with all the fingers of the right hand to produce a very full and even tremolo called shorr (literally meaning the pouring of water). The tanbur, a sacred instrument associated with the Kurdish Sufi music of Western Iran, has a repertoire based on ancient Persian music. Up until fifty years agothe tanbur was used only during djamm gatherings (devotional or liturgical ceremonies) of the Ahle-Haqq Sufis.

Namah Ensemble returns to UCLA with work that lies somewhere between performance and ritual, order and abandonment, and tradition and innovation. Najva explores zoroastrian mythology, religious discipline, fiery ritual, flights of ecstasy and the joy of togetherness as five women navigate in the unseen vastness with explosive movement and music, stemming from trance states tempered by deep introspection. Sufi dance and music become fused with contemporary and improvisational elements, to present dances set to the original score of Pejman Hadadi. “The perfect way to open the ritual aspects of Persian dance to a wider audience while preserving the sense of participating in something sacred” – LA Weekly.

Led by Banafsheh Sayyad, an MFA graduate in Dance from UCLA, Namah Ensemble was one of the only dance groups featured in the 1st Annual UK Festival of Persian Music & Dance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in October 2000. The Ensemble has also recently performed in Hamburg and Cologne, as well as the World Festival of Sacred Music, Dance Kaleidoscope, LATC, Skirball Cultural Center, Persian Cultural Center in San Diego and at UC Berkeley.