Shanbehzadeh Ensemble

The World in a Grain of Sand - The Shanbehzadeh Ensemble

Yalda Zamani

As the country’s main trade center over the course of several centuries, the Iranian city of Būshehr—situated on a vast plain running along the Persian Gulf coastal region in the south-western part of Iran—has experienced an enormous cultural exchange between ethnic groups and populations. This includes those who travelled to Iran, such as Indians, Africans, and Arabs, as well as other Iranian populations such as Lurs, Nomads, and Jews, who left many cultural traces, their musical instruments, folklore, popular songs and stories, and their influence on the language, food, and music of this region. Music always played a vital part in all aspects of life here, accompanying work, social events, and religion, expressing hopes and dreams as well as fear and pain. It was the culture brought to this land that first shaped its music. But it was music that later influenced the culture and left its mark on everyday life.

Born in Būshehr, Saeid Shanbehzadeh is one of the few musical representatives of the Persian Gulf and of his hometown in particular. Offering a mesmerizing experience of music and dance from a part of the world where the meeting of cultures created an astonishing richness, his Shanbehzadeh Ensemble turns the stage into an invitation to embrace life and celebrate diversity, a place where sound and movement become inseparable.

At the age of seven, Shanbehzadeh started playing Ney-anbān (a bagpipe made of lambskin) and Neydjofti (a double reed flute) and learned the dances and songs of his homeland. Saeid, who has since dedicated his life to protecting, preserving, and transmitting the music of southern Iran, explains that he only realized later that the music performed at different social or religious events during his childhood was not considered a form of artistic expression, but rather an inseparable part of these events— and so he set about to finding ways of performing the music on stage and presenting this jewel of Iranian culture to a wider audience.

When he was 20, he formed his own music group, the Shanbehzadeh Ensemble, and in 1990 won first prize at Tehran’s Fajr music festival. Just one year later he was invited to perform at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, and in 1993 he appeared at Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Meanwhile his continuing ethnomusicological research on southern Iran led him to assemble a rich archive of musical folklore. As early as 1996, he was offered to teach at the University of Toronto for six months, and in 1998, he became the director of the House of Arts and Culture on the Isle of Kish in Iran. He has also written music for and acted in several Iranian films. Based in France today and known around the world, his many and diverse artistic collaborators have included the French Montalvo-Hervieu Dance Company, the Cité de la Musique, the Théâtre de Chaillot, and the Louvre in Paris, as well as the Abbey of La Prée, where he was an artist in residence in 2011.

On his latest album, Pour Afrigha, released in 2017, Shanbehzadeh pays homage to the heritage of his Afro­ Iranian mother and his Baluchi father. “Pour Afrigha” means “Descendant of Africa” in Farsi and is also Shanbehzadeh’s mother’s family name. She was among the third generation of an African-born family deported to Iran from Zanzibar in Tanzania. Before slavery was abolished, Africans whose descendants are now concentrated in the southern regions of Iran, along the shores of the Persian Gulf, and Baluchistan, were brought from East and Central Africa. In Pour Afrigha, Shanbehzadeh creates a complex texture of improvised tunes and rhythms derived from different genres, resulting in a natural blend that reflects the shared musical roots of the artists involved in this collaboration, which was produced in Paris. Shanbehzadeh was joined by Iranian-Baluchi singer Rostam Mirlashari, French jazz guitarist Manu Codjia, his son Naghib on percussion, and several other guests. (Shanbehzadeh left Iran for France when his experimental fusion of African­ Iranian music with other regional folk forms found disfavor with the cultural authorities in his home country.)

In the music of the Būshehr region, women have always played a vital role. While men, mostly sailors, spent their time far away from the city and their families, sometimes traveling for more than a year, women were the heads of the household, not only taking care of their families but also participating in various cultural and social events, including music-making. Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, singing and dancing in public has been prohibited for women, but the Shanbehzadeh Ensemble over the past ten years has employed many women artists, singers, and dancers in its appearances, leading to a performance ban in Iran. The decision to involve female performers eventually inspired the idea for Saeid’s wife, Sheida—who had been working alongside her husband since 2006—to join the ensemble as a permanent member three years ago. The lineup is completed by Saeid’s son, Naghib, who began playing music with his father at the age of three and, in addition to mastering Iranian percussion instruments such as Dammā m, Doholgap, Pippeh, Kesser, as well as Zarb and Tempo, has also studied classical Western percussion in France.

The principal instruments of the Shanbehzadeh Ensemble are Ney-anbān and Neydjofti (the ancient Persian bagpipe and the reed flute mentioned earlier), Dammā m (a drum with a double face, originally from Africa and mostly used in religious ceremonies), the traditional Iranian percussion instruments Zarb and Tempo, Tombak, Bough (a kudu antelope horn), and cymbals.

From love songs to healing and religious music, from celebration to meditation to trance-inducing rhythms, the music of the Shanbehzadeh Ensemble draws inspiration from many aspects of the life and culture on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Its three musicians seek to share an unforgettable event, to transmit a unique sound, to present a highly poetic performance, and to invite audiences to experience the world in a grain of sand here at the Pierre Boulez Saal.

Yalda Zamani, born in Algeria and raised in Tehran, is a conductor and has been librarian of the Barenboim-Said Akademie since 2018.