Music of Colours: On Chārmezrāb-e Dashtī by Kalhor-Jahangiri-Aghaei

BY Morteza Abedinifard, June 24, 2023

It is not very common in Persian art music to use tone colour as the aesthetic focus of a composition. Composers and improvisors usually emphasize melody as the central musical element in their works. The piece Chārmezrāb-e Dashtī from the album Silk Road Journeys – When Strangers Meet is one of the few exceptions. By creating a environment environment in which the sound itself rather than the modal behaviour is in the foreground, the piece offers a music of colours where musicians explore variety of timbres and their combinations on their instrument within the context of the mode dashti.

The piece “Chārmezrāb-e Dashtī” from the album Silk Road Journeys – When Strangers Meet is a Persian classical composition in the mode Āvāz-e Dashtī which quotes a theme by the Persian legendary tār-player Jalīl Shahnāz while providing a charming combination of three beautiful Persian instruments. In this piece, Kayhan Kalhor, Siamak Jahangiri, and Siamak Aghaei perform setar, ney, and santur respectively. Although the piece stands within the long tradition of the Chārmezrāb, which as a musical form has the fastest tempo in Persian classical repertoire and is usually the most virtuosic number in a suite of several pieces that build a concert or a recording of Persian art music, this collaborative work offers a few subtly novel features that make the recording really outstanding.

Kalhor-Jahangiri-Aghaei’s quote of a really beautifully and somehow symmetrically built melody (a descending sequence built out of a pair of similar gestures) by Jalīl Shahnāz is used as the refrain that all solo and collective journeys return to; a great celebration of the unbeatable talent of the great melodist, Shahnāz. (Listen to example 2, the recording where Shahnāz himself plays the theme in his own recording of his original piece.)