Fereydoun Shahbazian says pop music has lost its soul and he is particularly unhappy with the way things are in the industry right now.
In an exclusive interview with Honaronline, The Conductor of Iran’s National Orchestra said, “If I had the power and the authority to turn things around, I would have stopped the trend on its tracks. I would have restored the situation to the way it was in the 1990s.”
Shahbazian is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts from the University of Tehran. Starting from 1961, he has been the conductor of the Radio Symphony Orchestra and has cooperated with singers such as Mohammadreza Shajarian and Nader Golchin. He began composing original soundtracks for movies in 1974 and became a member of the Music Council. Most of his works are top sellers. Here is a quick chat with the master himself:
You started working in this business prior to the 1979 revolution. This paved the way for you to become one of the most successful music composers of the 1980s. You played a key role in reviving Iranian pop music and finding new talents along the way. Tell us more on that.
In the 1960s, national radio and television networks were merged under supervision of Houshang Ebtehaj, a contemporary poet. He chose me to compose music for the popular radio program “Golha”. At that time traditional and pop music, as well as classical works performed by the National Symphony Orchestra were hugely popular. The quality of the works was top notch and the trend continued until 1979.
After the revolution, I was appointed as director of the Radio Symphony Orchestra. I tried to repeat the success of the early years but to no avail. This affected the quality and quantity of pop music to a great extent. We managed to compose war and revolutionary hymns though. When the Iran-Iraq war began in the 1980s, the only music you could hear was war hymns. Long story short, the position and face of music was changed completely.
In the early 1990s, traditional music became a favorite genre for many. It happened for some reasons. The first one is that it was largely for meditation, based on the poems of Hafiz, Sa’adi, Khayyam, Ferdowsi and so on. Another reason was the success of popular traditional singers like Mohammad Reza Shajarian and Shahram Nazeri. They were especially popular among the youth. Because of this music classes were held and music schools were established. The problem is, they had no professional teachers. It was a waste of time, resources and talents. It was so incredibly bad.
Quite the contrary, I did manage to organize several classes to teach traditional, national, children, folklore and pop music and instruments. I’m happy that this was a great period for our pop culture. But I’m sad that we faced systematic restrictions. This dashed the hopes of many young talents and they couldn’t make it to the industry.
At the same time, poet Ali Mo’allem was appointed as the head of Music Department at the IRIB. I was also chosen to head the Music Council and write songs for TV and radio programs. I did my best to reintroduce pop music to mainstream media and it paid off in the end. I introduced great talents such as Khashayar Etemadi, Mohammad Esfahani, Alireza Asar, Qasem Afshar, Hossein Zaman, Shadmehr Aghili, and Naser Abdollahi. They repeated the success of predecessors by imitating their voices. I didn’t mind. I was only concerned about the quality of the albums.
Then pop albums began to mushroom in the market, with no checks and balances and certainly no quality control at all. It was a race to the bottom. Those who couldn’t make it to the IRIB managed to get permission from the Culture Ministry to produce albums independently. This included those who had no idea what pop music was about.
The same problem continues even today, particularly seeing that there are authorities who are not fit to make key decisions for the industry. Another problem is the harmful contribution of middlemen and market speculators who outnumber top singers and musicians. I should admit that nothing is wrong with the music itself. The problem is the personal tastes of cultural and music authorities that continue to worsen the ongoing chaos in the market. You could have a great melody and a great idea for a song, but when it is mixed with inappropriate rhythms and lyrics the end result is a disaster. As I said earlier, I’m totally against the current trend and if I’m given the chance I will stop it.
What happened? How did our pop music change its course? Was this because of your retirement or does it has something to do with the events of 1990s?
Many newcomers managed to get permissions to produce albums that were mediocre. The lyrics, the songs, and the singers they were all run-of-the-mill and still came out. It was all about making as many albums as possible. I decided to fix things and direct the market back to its quality days. The good news is that our efforts didn’t go to waste. As a consequence, people are no longer listening to the music albums produced in Los Angeles or in Europe. Most Iranian singers who were active and popular in the time of Shah immigrated to Los Angeles after the revolution and continued making albums abroad. But things have changed now. Many music fans are listening to the albums that are produced in Iran or at the IRIB Center for Music.
That said, pop music has still failed to preserve the same popularity it had in the 1990s. Our musicians and singers are no longer cool. They are lame and not original. They all sound the same. Radio and TV channels are no longer coordinating with each other, let alone with the IRIB Music Center. We tried everything to stop broadcasting lame music works but failed.
How can we fix the problem? What are your suggestions? Is the industry able to create new memorable songs like those in the 1990s?
Former conductor and founder of National Orchestra Farhad Fakhreddini resigned from his position in 2016 over a lack of cooperation from the officials. They asked me to take his position which didn’t happen for a number of reasons. The Music Department of the Culture Ministry asked me to form a new orchestra for pop. I had to come up with policies and plans to save the genre. That’s because having a pop orchestra was not enough to save the genre.
These days anyone who sings also considers himself a composer. The thing is, most of these people can’t even sing. They don’t know that breathing is the most fundamental aspect of learning how to sing because your breath is the magic key to making your instrument (your body) work. They don’t know that as you exhale, your air rushes past your vocal folds (also called vocal chords) making them quiver. This movement is what allows you to produce sound.
I won’t talk about their inability to play musical instruments either, as it’s a waste of energy. A good singer knows how his whole body is his instrument and how he needs to build up certain muscles and remember to relax when he sings. He needs to take singing classes and sing only when he is allowed to. It is wrong to allow anyone and everyone to sing. The same is true about our musicians, lyricists, composers and players. They all need to study the history of Iranian poetry and its great poets. If we had a national pop orchestra, all these complications would have been resolved at the time.
Translation by Bobby Naderi