So often is the Western world kept out of touch with art and culture from other areas of the world. While institutions and systems in our world assist in this insulation, let’s be honest, it’s mostly our fault these days. The internet makes it easier than ever to explore other facets of life outside of our own lived experience and it’s about high time people enrich and learn more themselves. This is why I’m so happy to collaborate with a label like Worlds Within Worlds and a band like Badieh.
Badieh is an international project, the primary work of Michel Gasco of Spain (who you may remember from our coverage of Asef Habibi earlier this year) and Mohammad Miraghazadeh of Iran, two instrumentalists who together with a myriad of collaborators bring to life some of the richest folk songs of the region. This time, on their new album II, they set sights on the music of Greater Khorasan which encompasses parts of Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and more. November 17 will see the release of II, but we got a taste for you right here in the form of the video for “Yar Golakom”. Press play to take a trip!
In true Everything Is Noise fashion, “Yar Golakom” is an obscure traditional piece. ‘There aren’t many recordings available,’ says Gasco. ‘I came across the song through a video of young musicians in Torbat-e-Jam playing the dotar and singing. I was struck by its dry, dramatic, and incredibly powerful atmosphere, and saw its potential for an arrangement on this new album.‘ Gasco’s right – the atmosphere here is intense, inducing shivers at key moments and transitions the musicians achieve by utilizing the strong vocal presence of Ehsan Nasibi and Golnaz Hariri who are striking alone, but together bolster the song’s profound melody in a way that’s memorable and catchy.
I know I’m not alone when I look at the instruments and wonder what they’re called and what they do. Here on “Yar Golakom”, you hear many like the tar, bass tar, daf, setar, oud, and rebab. My favorite here is the tabla. Performed by Ramin Ahmadi, this percussion instrument – or rather, pair of instruments – has a deep, bassy tone that’s so beautiful to me ever since I heard it on albums like Mabool by Orphaned Land. Everyone so passionately and masterfully performs in the video which is interspersed with grand shots of the steppe (which is what ‘badieh’ means in Farsi and Arabic) near the city of Neishabur in northeast Iran. The aged and weathered building the band play in is an ancient caravanserai, an inn of sorts and place of rest for weary travelers during times long passed, the perfect place to evoke the history of the area and the music being played.
This is simply beautiful stuff, resonant and stalwart in its conveyance of cultural and artistic values of Greater Khorasan, an obviously rich region with a lot to say. Biggest gratitude to all involved for the opportunity to showcase this work – it’s easy to see why our writer Robert was so enamored with Badieh‘s first album when he reviewed it a couple years ago. Check out the album’s page on Bandcamp where you can preorder II digitally and on CD before it comes out on November 17 via Worlds Within Worlds. You can also check out the label’s greater Bandcamp offerings for more music from the region.
