Online video: Musician Mohammad Sahraei brings together tradition with adventurous spirit | Regional-Life | Existence
HALIFAX, N.S. —
Mohammad Sahraei arrived to Halifax from Iran in 2017 with two audio levels, two business degrees, and generations of rich family folklore tradition.
Within two months of his arrival in a new household on the other facet of the environment, he was keeping his 1st Halifax Central Library efficiency with the Iranian Cultural Culture, producing contacts with other musicians and festival and live performance organizers, and sowing the seeds for the style-transcending team Open Borders.
On Monday night at 7:30 p.m., Sahraei will join Iranian-Canadian musician/composers Behrooz Mihankhah and Yousef Mousavi and the Halifax rhythm portion of drummer Matt Gallant and bassist Lukas Pearse for a livestreamed live performance from Halifax’s New music Place as portion of Upstream Music’s 2021 Open up Waters Pageant.
The digital variation of the yearly celebration of new music is currently functioning by way of Jan. 16, whole specifics are offered at www.upstreammusic.org/open-waters-festival-2021.
In excess of a cup of tea in his Armdale studio, its walls lined with beautiful handcrafted instruments both inherited and collected in his travels, Sahraei suggests it is been a extensive journey to get to this stage for himself and his household, but he’s without end grateful for the musical local community that welcomed him with open up arms when he felt like a stranger in a strange land.
“When I arrived to Canada, and Halifax, it was my issue, actually, how I could match and adapt my tunes with this new culture?,” asks the virtuoso musician and educator. “I was considering it’s possible they do not like my tunes, because the tradition is different, and what should really I do?
“But when I arrived in this article, folks really supported my new music and they cherished my tunes. They invited me to perform lots of of the festivals in Nova Scotia, and we experienced a tour across Canada (with Nova Scotia people musician Kim Barlow) from west to east.”
Just about every instrument has a tale
Anytime he performs, Sahraei shares the tales driving every instrument, like the lengthy-necked figure-8-shaped stringed tar, or the two-stringed dotar, which has a remarkably prosperous and invigorating tone when he picks and strums it with a fast hypnotic rhythm.
Some of them even appear with in-jokes, like the overgrown Iranian cousin of a tambourine known as the daf, which is augmented by metal inbound links suspended behind the drumhead and is customarily performed outdoor, commonly in the mountains where by the audio can journey for miles.
“The daf can make you go deaf,” grins Sahraei, who claims he immediately discovered to appreciate the Canadian concept of the cultural mosaic, where by mutual regard and mutual curiosity and desire in every other’s traditions go hand-in-hand.
“I’ve lived in and traveled to tons of international locations all over the planet,” states the musician, whose master’s degree in ethnomusicology led to a Silk Road-type journey from China via Central Asia to the Middle East.
“I’ve hardly ever had this encounter like Canada. I feel no cost to use my standard apparel, to have my beard and participate in my songs without any difficulty.”
He describes his existence as an artist in Halifax as a sharp contrast to Iran, wherever condition limitations make it just about difficult to be a entire-time undertaking musician. Although there is a huge-ranging tunes culture there — from traditional people to classical composition to modern pop and rock — it exists underneath punitive ailments that make it challenging to expertise performances or recordings except beneath tightly managed circumstances.
“You are not able to be a expert musician and make your dwelling with audio, you have to do a thing else,” suggests Sahraei, who has an MBA and labored by working day as an accountant in Iran. “The federal government doesn’t aid songs at all, and they really do not allow for you to publish an album.
“If you want to maintain a live performance, it’s not simple for people today and you need to get a lot of certification. … And on Television set, it’s prohibited to exhibit devices, so it are unable to be your job. It’s truly hard for persons to live just with songs, you have to do heaps of other matters for your each day bread.”
Halifax total of musical and cultural opportunities
In Halifax, he can go on to build his aspiration of opening a world audio and folklore museum that would celebrate a lot of cultures and provide a functionality house, as nicely as turning out to be close mates and collaborators with Nova Scotian musicians like Barlow and his Open Borders bandmates, fellow Open Waters artist Janice Jackson, classical cellist Shimon Walt and multi-talented composer/conductor Scott Macmillan.
When COVID-19 limitations are eased once additional for musical performances, Sahraei plans to rejoin his pals for the worldwide concert that was postponed previous December, featuring a host of musicians from 4 continents. But for now he’s searching ahead to performing live with Open up Borders once more on Monday as they share an at any time-modifying melange of composed and improvised sounds.
The live performance will be stay as viewers view it on their products at house, while the multi-proficient musician says remaining on phase for the digicam isn’t the exact as staying among the a roomful of engaged listeners.
“In our tunes, the audience is a aspect of the band,” he states. “They give you a lot of comments for the duration of the general performance, and you can feeling when they truly feel anything. In classical new music, they listen and at the finish they clap, but in our tradition, they are collaborating with the musicians onstage, like in jazz songs, for illustration.
“But no, we won’t have any viewers, it may well be a minor awkward to sit and engage in for the space, but I’m actually excited to share the stage with my charming good friends.”
Similar: