Persian Music Iconoclast Mohsen Namjoo Rocks Through 'Strange Times'

When Iranian musician Mohsen Namjoo developed a distinctive approach that wove together ancient Persian poetry and sensibilities with influences of Western rock and blues in a singular, individualistic aesthetic, the reaction was clear:

"I got kicked out of university," he says.

When Iranian musician Mohsen Namjoo continued to develop a distinctive approach that wove together ancient Persian poetry and sensibilities with influences of Western rock and blues in a singular, individualistic aesthetic, the reaction was clear:

"I got a fellowship at university."

OK, the first time was in repressive Tehran in the '90s. The second at California's culturally liberal Stanford recently. But the two experiences together mirror the streams merging in his striking music. 'Strange Times,' a new song previewing an album-in-progress, neatly encapsulates his personal evolution. Its words come from Iranian poet Ahamad Shamloo (Namjoo's favorite, who passed away not long ago) but here in translation into English by the singer's filmmaker friend Babak Payami, who also served as translator for this interview. As he crafted a song entirely in English – a first for him, commissioned as part of a short film for the National Endowment for Democracy, he found himself wanting to give it a setting clearly Persian in reference.

Mohsen Namjoo, 'Strange Times'


"I found it a very good translation that had a musical aspect to it," says Namjoo, who is in 30s. "For me it was a very interesting challenge, using the Persian soundscape within an English lyrical sculpture."

He adds that several other songs on the upcoming album (ideally ready for release in the fall) will also be in English and will likely be featured in a concert on June 20 at the spectacular Frank Gehry-designed Los Angeles landmark, Walt Disney Hall. He'd hoped to be debuting another song there, one that incorporates lyrics from the Doors song 'Hello I Love You' – phrases from Jim Morrison's words reset into a "very traditional scale of the Persian Dastgah mode." But he's holding off on that due to unresolved matters of the copyright legalities.

However, at least an idea of what he might have done can be heard in some earlier work, including one that uses phrases from another Doors song, 'People Are Strange,' and 'Hammash,' the opening track from his 2009 album 'Oy.' The latter song forges a forceful melding of Persian and rock ideas until, near the end, Namjoo's dramatic vocals turn to a striking take on the unlikely 1966 Cher classic 'Bang Bang' in a manner that to many ears would seem to take on an entirely different meaning given his cultural roots – and one that if Quentin Tarantino had heard he might have used in 'Kill Bill' rather than the Nancy Sinatra version:

Mohsen Namjoo, Hammash'


It's a striking turn that fulfills earlier experiments. On his 2006 album 'Toranj,' for example, Persian lyrics are sung over varying degrees of jazzed-up rock, with such clear musical reference points in places as ZZ Top's "Le Grange" and Muddy Waters' blues boast 'Mannish Boy.'

And before you jump to any conclusions based on the controversies his music caused in his homeland, Namjoo sternly cautions listeners not to look for political motives in any of this. Don't even look for cultural commentary. There isn't any. Namjoo's intents are, he says, purely artistic.

"The origin of my approach had to do with how I integrate lyrics and music within the structure of Persian music," he says. "And the established rules and forms is, in my eyes, boring and limiting, an approach that has been repeated so much that it has turned into a rigid and uncompromising structure. And I wanted to find new ways to express this."

In his formative years in the '80s, he grasped on to the Western rock and blues that was making its way into Iran, sounds that to him evoked a sense of artistic freedom. At the same time, he says, he found most Persian-Western hybrids he encountered no better than the stifling traditions.

"They'd put side by side various instruments from East and West without integrating them," he says. "Each instrument would play, and if therefore was a harmonic resonance between them, that would be called 'world music.' For me the challenge was not just how to put them together but also the notation and musical blending of these instruments."

So he started having the various instruments trade what might be their "natural" roles. If he was playing the Persian stringed instrument the setar, he would play blues licks. If he was playing the Western guitar, he'd play in Persian modes.

"The natural continuation of that was extended to the lyrics, so I would sing the English phrases in the Persian scale and the Persian lyrics from 800 years ago in the blues scale and intertwine them much more deeply from the musical standpoint."

And while that got him kicked out of university, it also got him exposed to others looking for similar bending of the rules. Songs, including recordings that hadn't been released and in some cases not even finished, started turning up on the Internet – he swears he has no idea how. At first he was perturbed, but soon he was elated to have found a steadily growing audience. And eventually his road led to Stanford University, with a fellowship to lecture on music and in the Humanities Center. Through this he's also been commissioned to write a book about Iranian music after the 1979 revolution that replaced the Shah with an Islamic government, with publication expected by the end of this year. And now there are talks of him staying at Stanford via a scholarship to study in the music department.

Somewhere in the course of this, he picked up a tagline from the New York Times, in which he was dubbed the "Bob Dylan of Iran." That, of course, is as misleading as it is facile. (C'mon New York Times! You're supposed to be better than that.)

He understands it on a very simple surface element. He did, he says, do some protest music earlier in his career like Dylan. And like him he went on to reject that in favor of his highly personal artistic vision.

"But from a musical standpoint our preoccupations are quite different," he says.

Still, Dylan would certainly appreciate Namjoo's dedication and sacrifices.

"For the same of my love and passion for making music I've lost family, I've lost living in my own country and neighborhood," he says. "Nothing has higher value for me than music."