Tuesday 7 April 2009

Reza Derkashani












Music and Art in Kuwait on a three day bonanza by Reza Derakshani at Dar al Funoon.
The Youtube link will allow you to see the musician with the old traditional instruments of his country. In this collaboration with John Densmore, Reza shows how he can incorporate his ancestral ways with a modern input. He masters the Ney, the Sehtar, the Kamanche etc..He has lived everywhere on the planet, played music in many famous halls and he now resides in Teheran.
"All folk persian songs are love songs. It is all about love. The Ney is a complicated instrument but the more windy sound is closer to the human voice." he says.
His art is closely associated with the music, it was surely on small volume at the opening for his exhibit but he performed in the DIA theatre a day before.
It is refreshing to witness an artist of the region ready to fully embrace the tools of his peers, the stories woven in their collective consciousness and be proud of it. His canvases are not necessarily the result of propaganda gimmick, but an expression of darkness, pain, contradiction and yet using symbols of life: pomegranate, fig leaves, birds...
He goes from modern with digital underlying the oil or other mediums to large frames. Photos are a poor reproduction for the vastness and depth of his work. As good in his music as in his art, he emphazizes the necessity to excel: "whatever you do, you shouldn't lose the essence of it"



reza's website

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