Googoosh and The Believer Music Issue 2008

The Believer is a literary magazine from the same people that publish the literary magazine McSweeney’s. I’m excited that this year The Believer’s music issue includes a cover illustration of original Persian pop queen Googoosh - and the accompanying CD features her song Makhloogh, as well as Sholi’s cover of Googoosh’s Hejrat (for more on Sholi, check out the Pars Arts interview with Sholi frontman, Payam Bavafa, who brought this cover to my attention). You can buy a copy of the issue ($10) at any big bookstore, or get it straight from McSweeney’s right here.

Payam also writes: “You can download an mp3 of Googoosh’s version of Hejrat for free here, and you can now buy her 40 Golden Hits Record for the first time on iTunes via Taraneh Records (her best compilation).” Thanks, Payam! I think it’s very cool that Googoosh is hitting more mainstream music distribution channels.

But enough talk. Here’s Miss G. rocking out Makhloogh, back in the day:

Niyaz’s Nine Heavens

Niyaz, a world music group headlined by Iranian singer Azam Ali, recently released Nine Heavens, a two-disc album that’s getting lots of airtime on KCRW, the independent station here in Los Angeles. If you like classical Persian and Indian music, chances are you will love it. Check out the free download on their label’s website, and stream the album at Imeem. (Thanks to Oz for the heads up.)

Voices for Peace

Here’s an Iranian collaboration that’s both impressive and easy to support. Voices for Peace is a PSA featuring some prominent Iranian-American faces, all against war on Iran. Take a look, and pass it on.

Pars Arts on KIRN 670 AM

I’ll be on LA’s Iranian radio station, KIRN 670 AM, on Tuesday, May 13, talking with Suzi Khatami during her live show at 8 pm PST, mostly about Pars Arts and maybe some other stuff. It’s my first time on radio!

You can listen live here. (Click the “Listen Live” link at the top of the page and make sure you enable pop-ups for that site.)

If you’re checking in to Pars Arts for the first time because you heard the show, use the links at right to browse the site, and use the search bar at the top right of the page if you are looking for something specific.

Pangea Day: Sili

Iranian actor and filmmaker Ehsan Amani had a funny short called Sili (The Slap) in yesterday’s worldwide filmfest Pangea Day - one of several dozen films and (I think) the only Iranian entry. Check out the rest of the day’s movies and more about Pangea Day here.

Arsham Parsi, Founder of IRQO, on Gay Life in Iran

Check out Arsham Parsi, founder of the Iranian Queer Organization, talking about gay life in Iran with Lindsay Campbell on MobLogic.TV and how Google helped him realize that being gay is normal and okay. He also addresses the sex change business in Iran. The video basically makes me want to give him a hug. He is awesome. Way to go, Arsham!

Pars Arts Twitters Irvine: the Iranian-American Writers Association

The Inauguration of the Association of Iranian-American Writers is happening at UC Irvine tomorrow, in a workshop format that will address issues of representation and etc. It’s hosted by UCI’s Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture and its director, Nasrin Rahimieh, as well as writer and professor Persis Karim and journalist Homa Sarshar. Here’s a press release on Payvand News, and here’s the full day’s schedule. It’s free and open to the public, so please come if you can.

The attendees include people like novelists Porochista Khakpour and Anita Amirrezvani. And I’ll be there to talk about the Internet and blogs and self-publishing and social media, on a panel with Jahanshah Javid of Iranian.com. My talk will probably be mostly focused on the benefits for writers in engaging with their readership online.

I may not have wireless access there, but I will be talking to people, taking pictures, possibly shooting some video, and updating microblog site Twitter constantly throughout the day via my cell phone. You can follow that “coverage” at twitter.com/parsarts.

Noor Film Festival 2008 Photos

Hey, remember when we said we were going to the Noor Film Festival red carpet thingy? No? Well, we went. And Amy Malek - Pars Arts contributor, anthropology genius, NGO-starter, and fearless press photographer extraordinaire - took some amazing photos that you should definitely not miss. Seriously, it was elbows-out in this press pit and Amy spent a solid couple of hours wedged between some people from Persian satellite TV and a disgruntled yet chatty guy from one of the wire services. We love you, Amy.

Above, she managed to capture the Iranian Paris Hilton (accidentally?) flashing her dog’s nether regions. Persian Paris’s real name is Saye Yabandeh, and she’s an actress, and we think she kinda rocks for bringing her puppy to the LAX Hilton. And her pet’s coloring matches her leopard-print dress. So Hollywood!

Check out the rest of the photos, which include guy-who-plays-Dwight-Schrute Rainn Wilson, Iranian stage actress Mary Apick, and the best male Persian pop star of any of our lifetimes (Andy, duh), among others, in the full Noor Film Festival 2008 red carpet photo album.

So besides the pictures… our favorite thing of the night was the clip below. We say keep your eyes and ears open for this doc about prejudice and perception, Ain’t She Sweet, by Bita Haidarian:

Mixed Nutz

Norooz Productions, the people behind the popular animated film Babak & Friends, recently unveiled their latest project. Mixed Nutz is an animated extension of the Babak brand with a bunch of other multicultural characters added. It’s airing on Tapesh TV (which I’ve honestly never watched, so unfortunately I probably won’t see this until it’s out on DVD or streaming online somewhere).

The trailer is above and I’m really interested in how the show will avoid or, even better, address cultural stereotypes. But watch the trailer - it’s somewhat reminiscent of Bobby’s World. What do you think?

I honestly thought this was something completely different when I saw the name “Mixed Nutz” (as in, something totally not appropriate for children). So glad I was wrong. And also glad to see that Norooz Productions says they have “created a cultural advisory board by country to ensure accuracy and relevance of cultural content.” Here’s more from Iranian.com:

The production company has once again gone to great lengths to ensure Disney-quality animation with a superb cast of voices, musicians, artists and animators. Famous Iranian music band Kiosk and composer Mehrdad Arabifard were part of the production. The designs of characters and animation are headed up by Alfred Gimeno and Glen Kennedy, two animators who have not only won awards like Emmys but have worked at great companies likes Warner Brothers, Hanna Barbera and Disney. The Farsi version of the series was dubbed with professional voice-over actors from Iran to ensure quality.

Norooz Productions plans to launch Mixed Nutz on televisions stations around the world. The series, which currently consists of 13 episodes, is being dubbed into five languages, including Persian, Korean, Hindi, Spanish and French. The company has plans to air the series on major networks like Canada’s CBC, Korea’s EBS, Indian TV, Ariana TV in Afghanistan and the BBC. The founders hope that once the show is aired, the demand will enable them to renew the show for more seaons in the coming year.

Re-Interpreting Googoosh: An Interview with Musician Payam Bavafa

Meet Payam Bavafa, songwriter/guitarist in a San Francisco-based experimental rock band called Sholi. The band’s most recent EP, “Hejrat,” features an awesome cover of Googoosh’s song by the same name. We asked Bavafa, the group’s sole Iranian-American member, what Persian music means to him, and why he and his bandmates - drummer Jonathon Bafus, bassist Eric Ruud, and keyboardist/percussionist Greg Hagel - decided to cover the Persian pop legend. Here’s what he had to say.

Pars Arts: Tell us about Sholi; how’d you guys get together, and how’d you pick the name?
Payam Bavafa: I started playing music with Jon (the drummer) in Davis, where we were both going to college. I wanted to have a Persian name for our group, and Jon liked “Sholi,” the nickname that my dad gave my brother and me when we wrestled as kids.

PA: Your newest release is a 7″ entitled Hejrat, which is the name of the famous Googoosh song you’ve covered. Why the fascination with Googoosh, and why did you choose the song Hejrat?
PB: Googoosh was the predominant soundtrack to youth in Iran in the ’70s. My mother came to the United States then as a college student, and like many other young Iranian girls of the time, she was fascinated with Googoosh… her voice, her looks, her dancing, her fashions. For today’s middle-aged Iranians, including my mom, listening to Googoosh’s music is reminiscent not only of Iranian ’70s music, but the family and the culture they left behind. Thinking about how powerful this inherently nostalgic music must have been to my mother and other Iranians struck a particularly strong chord in me.

My original idea was to do an entire album of Googoosh covers, reinterpreting them with Sholi as a means to turn American audiences on to her music and story. However at the time (November 2007), this seemed a bit ambitious, and also political rhetoric between Iran and America was escalating in such a way that I felt the urge to make a more concise statement right away - one that would turn an American artist’s fan-base on to Iranian music and culture and vice-versa. That is still pretty ambitious, I suppose…

It was also then that I read an essay by Hamid Nafisi called The Making of Exile Cultures, about the impact of media, particularly television, on Iranian expatriates looking back to images/sounds/relics of their pre-revolutionary past for a sense of cultural identity. This led me to thinking about how I seek out my own cultural identity, with Internet and new media playing a prominent role. The YouTube video and audio clips we sampled for the 7″ - the front-cover image of Googoosh on the TV taken from the Hejrat music video, the image of Joanna on the back cover taken from the Sprout and the Bean music video, and the audio clip of Iranians being interviewed about what they do for fun at the end of Sprout and Bean, are all a testament to Nafisi’s ideas and also the way I connected to the songs myself. My good friend Michael Aghajanian posed our parents watching Googoosh on television at his house in LA for the cover shot.

As for why I chose “Hejrat” in particular… it started with seeing the music video and being intrigued. After looking further into the lyrics and speaking with some Iranians, I realized that it’s commonly regarded as one of Iran’s most beautiful songs. I believe that the literal translation of the title is “Migration,” and it’s about a lover that has departed. I wanted to re-frame the song to be about Iran itself leaving the hundreds of thousands of natives who were essentially forced out of their homeland at the turn of the Islamic Revolution, a theme that I think Googoosh herself embodies.

PA: You’re the sole Iranian in Sholi’s lineup. How did you introduce Googoosh to your bandmates? Have you guys explored other Persian music, and do you have plans to do other Iranian covers?
PB: We don’t have plans for more covers at the moment, but I think that Persian music is something that is inherently explored within this band… in the melodies, rhythms, tunings, 1-chord song structures.

I introduced Eric (our bass player) to Googoosh’s music a long time before he was in the band. I could tell he was moved by it, not even knowing what the song was about. More recently I gave everyone “Googoosh: 40 Golden Hits,” a best-of compilation on Taraneh Records my friend Razmin turned me on to.

PA: The B-side of this album is a cover of the Joanna Newsom song, “Sprout and the Bean.” Again, an interesting choice, as Newsom’s ethereal folk-style contrasts so much with Googoosh’s 1970s disco-chic. What does Newsom’s music represent here?
PB: I think “Sprout and the Bean” is beautiful and poses an interesting counterpoint to “Hejrat,” thematically. The song climaxes with a chorus of voices asking “Should we go outside?” Googoosh’s answer, through “Migration,” the name and theme, is delivered on side A. The backwards sequencing here - implying action or “migration” preceding thought or choice or questioning - is suggestive of many Iranians’ sudden plight at the turn of the revolution. A large number of these exiles still look to the past for answers in their search for happiness and a sense of cultural identity. While Joanna’s and many Americans’ existential dialogue is far-removed from political pressures, Googoosh’s and the expatriated Iranians’ dialogue is heavily centered on their cultural displacement. Joanna embodies the fantastical and other-worldly, and works within an original, mystical universe that she’s seemed to have created all on her own. I think that her work moves the audience forward into a fantasy realm, rather than backward into a realistic, nostalgic one. It’s full of “danger of broad boats,” “hollow chatter of tadpoles,” among a myriad of other fantastical constructions that are characteristic of her free-flowing musical ideas. To me, what Googoosh represents now is a repressed cultural icon. Her songs have rigid, repetitive structures, and are mostly romantic in nature. Her work, in its current context, is most often interpreted as nostalgic, turning listeners back to the way their lives were before political circumstance changed everything.

PA: You’re touring now, with recent stops in Brooklyn complete. How has your music been received thus far, especially the Persian-language Googoosh cover? A couple of your stops were in my old neighborhood, Williamsburg - I’m so curious about what the hipsters made of your show.
PB: I think we were received well at [Brooklyn venue] Union Hall. The place was a strange combination of hipster kids and 30-something parents with their babies playing bocce. This Norwegian prog band called Ungdomskulen played with us. They were awesome.

Oddly enough, the Googoosh song has been the highlight of many shows among Americans and Iranians alike. In Portland, this very nice Iranian woman came to the show with her American husband, and they liked it so much they welcomed us to stay the night at their house! I feel like in some ways doing such a cover has allowed us to connect with a crowd of people who would have never connected to our music otherwise… the main example of that being my parents. Another highlight was a Take Away Show we recently did with director Vincent Moon (yet to be released). For one of the videos we walked through Dolores Park in San Francisco carrying guitar, cello, and bells, playing “Hejrat” to hundreds of unsuspecting listeners.

PA: What other Persian music has influenced your and Sholi’s music?
PB: Lately I’ve been listening to the Golha Radio Programmes (The Flowers of Persian Poetry and Song) on radiogolha.com. They are very beautiful and inspiring; it’s so nice that they’ve been digitally archived since their original broadcasts from 1956-1979.

When I was young, I listened to a lot of Andy and Kouros, and actually still do. I think Balla is one of the best Iranian pop albums. Besides that, Shajarian, Javad Maroufi, Ebi, Hayedeh, Marzieh, Dariush and probably a hundred other artists that I couldn’t name that my parents have filled the house with since I was young. A lot of traditional Persian music.

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Hear Sholi’s music here: