Saturday, October 17, 2009

Abjeez: The Iranian Singing Sisters

After Mohsen Namjoo, Abjeez are my most favorite Iranian Post-Traditionalists. Please go to their colourful web site to discover more.
The Abjeez sisters, Safoura and Melody were born in Iran amongst a family of diverse musicians. Both sisters moved to Sweden along with their family in 1987. Looking up to their father’s passion for music combined with older brother Sufi’s love for guitar encouraged the sisters to start writing, and composing original music. Having experienced living life in countries such as India, Sweden, Norway, England, Spain and United States has also had a great impact and influence on Abjeez music. (source: Album notes)
My FAVORITE Album is Hameh (2007)! Which I just purchased on iTune store. This is a video sample of why I like them. (Eddeaa means pretension)


To shift from the morbidity that neo-resistance has been suffering lately, I have posted a video of one of the songs of their latest Album "Perfectly Displaced" below.
The album is described as "World Pop music for the wired world: flamenco hot, reggae cool, salsa sassy. From the easy bop of "Vaghti ke" to the Flamenco yearning of "Tu Me Haces Falta" or the lashing passion of "Walking in her shoes" the Abjeez blend the rhythms and languages of the world into one great braza.
The Persian lyric of the song is : Jaa-e to khaaliye (your place is empty ... it implies, I miss you.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really liked the historical costumes and unibrows in the first video. My nephew actually has a perfect, classical Persian unibrow. But he shaves away the connection! I've tried unsuccessfully to get him to keep it and grow one of those extended vertical mustaches, like the kind Iranian royalty used to wear centuries ago. It 'd be brilliant! But he refuses. No appreciation for individuality. He simply settles for mundane conformity. (There's a lot of that going around lately- have you noticed?)

Unfortunately, I didn't take to the euro-musical genres of these songs. I yearn for a truly Persian genre of contemporary music.

Any suggestions, Naj?

-Pirouz

Anonymous said...

Naj, I meant extended horizontal mustaches.

-Pirouz

Naj said...

Pirouz,

Truly Persian suggestions are so numerous; I don't know where to begin. I am sure you know about the old masters. Have you seen the recent post I made on Parviz MEshkatiyan

You have to tell me what you mean by "truely" Persian genre though; persian pop genre, persian traditional genre, persian folk genre, persian what?

The music of these girls is not "persian" but their lyrics are REFRESHINGLY Persian ... they are "harfe hesab" without suffering any metaphor--which in my view makes traditional persian music kind of boring.

Anyways, I like to recommend to you the works of Kamkar brothers and the works of Hossein Alizadeh . (Kurds make our BEST persian musicians!)