Ethnographic Footage
Since 2006 I have spent over eight years in the field recording ethnographic interviews, films, and musical performances. At times I am overwhelmed by this growing archive. I am overwhelmed by the thought of having more than I can present through scholarship in a timely fashion. Countless artists, tradition bearers, and gatekeepers generously gave me their time with the expectation that they would be heard and seen.
What becomes of the voices hidden behind the veil of my hard drive? What becomes of the bustling street corners and serene rural landscapes that presented for eyes but are now confined to a cloud? Preservation and critical scholarship are noble acts but there is no need to freeze all fresh material for a later day—some fruits are best enjoyed from the vine.
Here I attempt to answer my anxieties above by presenting parts of my ethnography that can be made public. This includes rehearsals, interviews, performances, and videos of public spaces. The simple hope is that access, visibility, and engagement with different mediums and materials can inspire and inform.
Hamsaz Ensemble Rehearsal
Hamsaz Ensemble was founded by Iranian composer and tar virtuoso Ali Samadpour in 2010. To date, Hamsaz has held multiple sold-out concerts across the US. This rehearsal was held prior to our concert at the Seattle Town Hall. There is something special about rehearsal spaces in classical Persian music, both inside Iran and in the diaspora. These long rehearsals intertwined with socializing, eating, and really living amongst each other produce moments that are in themselves private performances that hold their own artistic merit. These space are imbued with a musical intimacy, artistic solidarity, and ethical maturity that seamlessly blend various personalities, distinct musical styles, and personal sonorities into one unique collective sound—refined as a Persian rug that projects one balanced and harmonious texture/pattern through the selfless interweaving of various figures that become one. At times I wonder, do we rehearse to play in our concerts, or do we schedule concerts so we can rehearse? Video by: Mehdi KaramiBards from the Land of Sun
Bards from the land of Sun (Damout) from Payam Yousef on Vimeo.
"Bards from the Land of Sun” is a short ethnographic film on dotar players in Iran's Khorasan region." It was screened in its complete form at Harvard VES school on May 3rd 2019. The current version posted here has omitted scenes/sequences with potentially sensitive material as a precaution. While this negatively impacts the flow and context of the film, nonetheless I hope this limited access can be beneficial to a broader viewership. Khorasan is Iran’s largest region located on the country’s Northeastern periphery bordering Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, functioning as a bridge into Central Asia. Legacies of historically fluctuating borders make Khorasan an ethnically diverse area consisting of Persians (Shiite and Sunni), Turkic tribes, Turkmens, and Kurmanji Kurds. The musical cultures of all these ethnolinguistic groups are intimately tied to Khorasan’s emblematic instrument, the dotar (a two-string long neck lute). The dotar is performed by virtuoso bards called baxshi-s. Through musical performance baxshi-s play an important role as poets, story tellers, keepers of oral histories, performers of epics, and symbols of ethnic identity. This film is a modest snapshot of some of the most important culture bearers of this instrument in Iran: Alireza Soleimani, Mohammad Yeganeh, Hossein Damanpak, and Osman Mohammad Parast.