The radif and the dastgah
Persian classical music is not written down as compositions but held in the *radif*, a body of melodies passed from master to pupil and arranged into twelve modal systems.
Musicموسیقی
The music of the Iranian world runs from the classical *radif*, learned phrase by phrase from a master, to the songs of villages, tribes, shrines and Sufi lodges. Much of it exists to carry poetry, so that a ghazal of Hafez may be heard sung before it is ever read. These pages follow its instruments, singers and traditions across Iran and its neighbours, from Tabriz to Bukhara, from Kurdistan to the Gulf.
All of Music
Avaz: the classical voice
In Persian classical music the singer is the centre, and the song is a poem: a ghazal of Hafez, Saadi or Rumi, unfolded line by line in free rhythm and ornamented with the breaking voice of the *tahrir*.
Barbad and the Sasanian court
Barbad, minstrel to Khosrow II, is the most famous musician in Persian memory. Little about him can be proved; much about him has been loved, retold and painted for fourteen centuries.
Tar
With its double-bowled mulberry body and skin face, the tar was the instrument on which the radif itself was codified. In the Caucasus a related tar has grown into a tradition of its own.
Setar
Named for three strings but strung with four, the setar is the most intimate instrument of Persian music: small, light, soft-voiced and played with a single fingernail.
Kamancheh
A small round bowl, a long neck and a spike to rest on the knee: the kamancheh is the bowed voice of Persian music, turned rather than bowed across.
Santur
Seventy-two strings over a trapezoid of walnut, struck with two featherweight hammers: the santur gives Persian music its shimmer.
Ney
A length of reed with six holes, blown at the rim and held between the teeth: the ney is the oldest-sounding voice in Persian music, and in Rumi’s *Masnavi* it is the soul longing for home.
Tombak and daf
The goblet-shaped tombak gives Persian classical music its pulse; the great frame drum, the daf, beats at the heart of Kurdish Sufi ceremony and, since the late twentieth century, on concert stages.
Tanbur
A long-necked lute with two or three strings, the Kurdish tanbur carries the sacred music of the Yarsan, the People of Truth, in the mountains between Kermanshah and Iraqi Kurdistan.
The bakhshis of Khorasan
In northern Khorasan, singers called *bakhshi* tell epics and love stories to the two-stringed dotar, in Kurdish, Turkic, Turkmen and Persian. Their music was inscribed by UNESCO in 2010.
The ashiq and the saz
Poet, singer, storyteller and player of the long-necked saz, the *ashiq* is the minstrel of the Azerbaijani-speaking world, on both banks of the Aras.
Shashmaqam
Six great suites of song and instrumental music, crystallised at the court of Bukhara and sung in Tajik Persian and Uzbek: the Shashmaqam is the classical music of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, and each nation defines it as its own.
Music of the south
Bagpipes, cymbals and great drums, the rhythms of bandari dance and the healing ceremonies of the *ahl-e hava*: the music of Iran’s Gulf coast carries the sea, and the Arab and African worlds across it.
Sorna and dohol
A piercing shawm and a great double-headed drum lead the weddings, festivals and mourning of the Lurs, the Bakhtiari and the Kurds, and draw everyone into the line of the dance.
Music of Baluchistan
The bowed sorud, the keyed benju, epic songs of the *pahlawan* and the healing ceremonies of the *guati*: the music of the Baluch, in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Kurdish song
From the unaccompanied storytelling song of the *dengbêj* to the ancient Hawrami *siyachamana*, Kurdish song carries history, love and lament across four countries.
The twentieth century
A century of change: notation and the conservatory, the Golha radio programmes, a pop era, the transformations after 1979 and a diaspora scene centred on Los Angeles.