Kayhan Kalhor & Mohammad-Reza Shajarian

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Kayhan Kalhor & Mohammad-Reza Shajarian · Kayhan Kalhor is an Iranian musician who plays the kamancheh, a bowed instrument with a round resonating body. Mohammad-Reza Shajarian was an Iranian singer and ostad, master, of traditional Persian music. He was born in 1940 in Mashhad, the son of a Qur'an reciter, and began vocal technique at the age of five, at first through Qur'an recitation. At twelve, without his father's permission, he began on the radif, the classical Persian repertoire. He began his career in 1959 at Radio Khorasan and broke through in the 1960s with his own vocal style. He died in 2020.

Music and breakthrough

After the revolution of 1979, Shajarian was one of the few singers who could continue to perform in public. He was known for his mastery of the difficult dastgah style and also sang songs from Mazandarani, Azeri, Kurdish and Luri music. He worked with Hossein Alizadeh, Parviz Meshkatian and Dariush Pirniakan, among others. UNESCO gave him the Picasso Award in 1999 and the Mozart Medal in 2006. The Los Angeles Times called him in 2017 the greatest living master of Persian classical music. After he supported the Green Movement and criticised the government, he was banned from concerts and releases.

Influence

Together with Kalhor he made Silence of the Night in 2000, among other things. The duo stands for a music in which voice and bowed instrument follow and challenge each other, in long, free improvisations within a dastgah. In this way Shajarian brought the Persian tradition to a broad international audience.

Listening

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  Silence of the Night · Kayhan Kalhor & Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, 2000