Rough Guide to the Music of Iran

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The traffic-choked streets of Tehran and the magnificent mosques of Esfahan, the underground DJs and the Sufi minstrels of Kurdistan, are all reflected in the vibrant musical scene in Iran. From contemporary rappers to folk legends, from great singing stars to contemporary bands, from regional traditionalists to the trance musicians of Baluchistan, this Rough Guide features a captivating cross-section of contemporary Iranian sounds.

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Produced and annotated by UK-based Rough Guides and SongLines editor Simon Broughton (the enhanced CD includes an enlightening interview with him), this admirable compilation travels through fifteen varied tracks, showcasing some of Teheran’s finest classical practitioners, cutting-edge pop stars, folk singers, and even a few invaluable and previously unheard field recordings. As is typical of so much of the Middle East, history is a living part of daily life in modern Iran. Latter-day expressions descend from ancient Persia’s highly rarified and sophisticated culture, where centuries of troubadour-poets plied their craft before enlightened despots. Many of the instruments, from the shawm-like duduk, captured live in a performance by the great Djivan Gasparyan, to Kayhan Kalhor’s scratchy yet agile kamancheh (spiked fiddle) harbor haunting parallels with early Western music. But the most overwhelming impression is of diversity, whether in terms of outlook, opinion, or tribal identity, as scholars and hip-hoppers, traditionalists and iconoclasts, Armenians, Kurds, and the nation’s lesser-known black minority all get heard from. And in these troubled times, anything capable of reminding the more jingoistic among us that relating to the so-called “Axis of Evil” will prove more complicated than an action movie or a computer game is very welcome. —Christina Roden