Mohsen Namjoo

As a young musician, Mohsen Namjoo first captivated Iranians’ attention with his magnificent album Toranj from 2007. This album, mostly produced underground, exploded among the Iranian community, both inside and outside of the country, because of its subversive words and, most of all, for its unusual fusion of classical Persian poetry and music with Western melodies and instrumentation. Namjoo’s bold music broke through all social, cultural, and musical taboos. It also insulted the Islamic regime, which called for his arrest, and, eventually, in 2008, forced him into a life in exile.
Considered a phenomenon within Iranian culture, Namjoo has pioneered a contemporary readaptation of Persian music, which has been trapped in its own conservative and stagnated rules. With a classical voice and musical training from childhood, he has passionately studied Western music even while living in a repressive social environment that considers Western culture its greatest threat. Yet he has fearlessly navigated his own musical way to arrive at a rare form of maturity and refinement. Hugely popular and respected among Iranians of various generations and classes, he now appeals to a wider audience that, I predict, will not easily reduce his work to simple marketing labels, such as Eastern or ethnic music. Its echoes are complex and far too close in ethos to American indigenous music such as jazz and the blues. I worked with Namjoo on the recent theatrical production OverRuled , commissioned by Performa 11, and can attest to the universal appeal of his music—it was apparent on the beaming faces of our audience.

Mohsen Namjoo I learned to play the setar eight months prior to university, for the entrance exam. At that time, I had big plans in mind, and not necessarily the popular five-minute song format that later emerged and that suited the socio-political situation. In reality, in the beginning, I was not in any way sensitive to the outside political or artistic atmosphere. I was thinking about my own music projects, with some hopes and dreams that someone would come along and invest in recording them. These were all plans for a large orchestra, especially fusion projects with Iranian poetry and music.