Islam Awareness Week - Sufism and Rumi

Leading Sufi spokesman Nihat Tsolak visits the studio for a demystifying session about Sufism at host Fari Bradley’s request. As 2007 Islam Awareness Week falls on sufi poet Rumi’s 800th Birthday, events around London have stirred new interest in this rebel mystic. Along with excerpts from the play “Rumi, Unveil the Sun” and interview with a leading actor and the director, Fari discusses what the ins and outs of Sufism in 2007 might mean, as well what the Sufi top ten tunes for getting high might be.

With so much bad press recently, Sufism is the best PR flag Islam could have. Where Islam is perceived as rigid and intolerant, Sufism is flexible and accepting. Where Islam has a fixed set of rituals, Sufism is instinctive and driven by the individuals own relationship with the divine, a self empowering concept for which many Sufis were originally martyred.

Fari puts it to Nihat whether one might be a Christian or gay Sufi and they also discuss which historical figures display Sufi characteristics without possibly ever having heard of this wayward branch of Islam.

Minou Norouzi reccomends “Japon” from Mexico

Some truths about Austria from film maker Minou Norouzi. With psychoanalytical elements to her films amongst her themes are misplaced femininity and incubated desire, within the context of a budding male sexual revolution that she sees happening.

Some of her short films are viewable on her site, of which there is much to think about. Some contain little action and little text and have the main character frozen in a moving landscape. What does she keep from us, what does the film refuse to give, and by so doing, lay bare about our expectations?

A unique woman, she says she is neither Iranian nor Austrian, and so we nudge her on her way back to her grandfather’s point of origin; to the town where people are either mad, or genius.

Read more about the film Minou reccommends: Japon

Victory! Screen2Studio: How We Conjured The Fakir of Mirth

How you discover the existence of someone on the other side of the globe, quite by chance on YouTube, and then have them again by chance in your studio a month later?

We must be blessed. Maz Jobrani brings tears to the eyes to all who understand Iranian culture, with his accurate and raucous descriptions of the differences between Iranians and Arabs. He also reaches the wider audience with his crazy tour: The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour and puts his entire body into voicing the distraught feeling of those that find themselves inadvertently cast intothe Middle Eastern [box] since 9/11.

Maz announces for the first time anywhere that he’s going to become a father and tells us about his feisty UK resident Grandma and Persian protocols.

Sound Art and Tescos

Some of the most heart warming stories are locked away, and despite having engineered at Resonancefm for a while, no one here knew of Shervin Shaeri’s encounter with England in the 1990’s when he left impoverished Iran at the age of 9.

For Shervin eating rice with a spoon was normal and the aisles of Tescos were a lucid and hitherto unimagined dream. England was an alien projection for him, different from his own idea in which we would all have had long hair and talked of football…but he has found his feet here. Having studied sound art he is making his name quickly and already has set up a limited company providing audio, whilst putting out on songs on BBC Asian Network and entering the Eurovision song contest!

We discuss police, Asian men and music.

http://ia351437.us.archive.org/3/items/SixPillarsToPersiaSeriesIiShowIvMutantJukebox/SixPillarsToPersia20071022MutantJukebox_64kb.mp3

Six Pillars’ monthly column in OCPC Magazine

Thanks to the internet we may grow an Orange County listenership, as OCPC magazine will take a monthly write up of the show’s goings on, linking back to the Resonancefm website for podcasts and schedules. We”ll be in December.

Meanwhile I think I received my first ever Iranian SPAM, all I can understand is that there is a website, with a man on it, and the poster, “Sanaz” seems qite excited.

I wont be following that link! The comedian pictured above, Maz Jobrani, incidentally tells a rather unnerving story in one of his comedy sketches: he emailed as a joke to friend a rather dubious line about being a terrorist and so on, to find that his email was blocked for a couple of weeks. Terrible! Terrible joke, terrible state of affairs, terrible invasion of privacy but also probably and equally terribly necessary. Maz is due on the show soon, along with an excerpt from his cutting edge “Axis of Evil” tour.

Six Pillars - Collected Memories, 3rd show 15.10.07

Featuring Candian ska band: The Planet Smashers with “Ska of Iran” and an in-depth interview with curator of “Collected Memories” at Artspace in Maddox St, London. 30 modern Iranian painters work have been brought to UK and sold more than half in a week. Fari and Morad look at several pieces and discuss where modern art from Iran is going.

Six Pillars - Poetess Dorna and sound artist Sote, 3rd week

The studio was adorned by sapphic-beat poet Dorna, hailing from Communist parents in Sweden, she makes films and performs poetry live. Her poems are very intimate, cathartic, the kind that writers pen to be able to see their thoughts and feelings clearly.

The music was again by Sote (is that Scum of the Earth?) - his music has changed since his first release on WARP and he’s gone left of them to Dielectric records with Dastgaah, a highly enjoyable album.

We also played some Roshi, Welsh-Iranian folk singer just emerging on the art music scene. My favourite song of hers is a re-working of an old Iranian folk song “Mastom” - I am drunk (on divine love).

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Six Pillars - BBC World Service’s Behzad Bolour, 3rd show

We were bombarded with energy by bumptious an brave Bezahd Bolour, the man who makes BBC World Service look and sound more like 1Xtra!

Thanks also to Shugmonkey, who designed our flyer and produced a singular track using his Saz and mini-sa especially for the series. His vocals feature on Trans Global Underground’s new album MOONSHOUT.

Bezahd and I discussed everything from Iranian mountains to man’s lineage from monkies: he has since then engaged me in procuring people for his various projects, including Rumi Rapping and classical musician Nazeri who is currently on at the Barbican.

I’ll get round to podcasting this once the Frieze is over, Resonancefm have the yearly booth there again.