Music of the Bards from Iran

The following is the story of the first half of this recording, called Zohre-Taher, recited by Haj Ghorban himself in Persian: 

A segment of the title track The Music of Bards from Iran in MP3 format.

Ostad Soleimani is a father figure to many of the musicians of Iran. Many believe that he is one of the most important artists in Iran. He is a bakhshi from Khorasan and he lives as a farmer in a small village close to Ghouchan. This recording was made by a group of engineers and musicians at his home using the state of the art digital multitrack recorders. You can expect something very new from this compact disk. The tradition of this music goes back a few thousand years, however, unlike many other traditional music, it is played with an amazing ferocity and yet the expressions are very refined. The music demands your attention which we hope will be rewarded by very subtle and profound emotions. 

During his performance in the Avignon Festival in France in 1991, Haj Ghorban and his son were asked to come back to the stage for 3 encores; afterward they were carried by the audience on their hand and later Haj Ghorban was interviewed by Le Monde, Liberation, Le Nouvel Observateur, BBC, and other cultural media. His picture appeared on the front page of Liberation (July 31 1991) where he was called "a national treasure". 

The more we listened to this recording, the more we felt the graceful and natural beauty of his musical expressions and the meaning of his words: 
 

``The instrument is not my instrument 

I am the instrument when I perform.'' 

Haj Ghorban Soleimani