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Songs Daily

I have a friend I have never met, but who is now very dear to me. His name is Ali Tehrani. He is a Ph.D. engineer by profession, and a musician by heart and soul. He has a website in which he painstakingly and lovingly picks poems, writes music, and performs (sings and sometimes plays) songs. http://www.songsdaily.com/blogs/songsdaily/ His work is unique because he doesn’t just carefully and wholeheartedly write music or sing a song—he takes the trouble of teaching the music to his audience. He used to also leave interesting commentaries at the bottom of his music posts, but he is taking a sabbatical from that function for now, for reasons I respect. Whenever I feel low, I go to his by now extensive gallery of old and new music and look around, listen, and leave. Something very poignant and special he wrote is a song he wrote and performed based on a poem by Parvaneh Foroohar. Until I ran into his blog, I didn’t know that Parvaneh Foroohar was such a powerful poet. This poem is sad, and it is so eerie that she wrote it when she was alive, clearly and poetically predicting the way in which she and her husband would die, yet conveying hope for the future of Iran. Here’s the poem, and the link to Songs Daily. If you cannot read Farsi, please leave a comment and I will translate it for you.

چه غم آلوده شبي
شبي از دشنه و از دشمن پر
گرده ها زير فشار شب خم
سينه ها از غم شب خسته و زار
نه نسيمي، نه نواي مهري
نه اميدي، نه صداي پايي
شبي اينسان خاموش
شبي اينسان خونين
شبي اينسان ز كژانديشي پر
در كدامين تاريخ ، مي توان دیگر يافت
در همه خلوت اين شام سياه
وندرين ظلمت محض
به كدامين اميد، مي توان ديگر بود
به كدامين فرياد مي توان سينه سپرد
به چنين تيره شبي ، نتواني آويخت
ژنده پيراهن خويش
خشم طوفان مددي
رعد و بوران سببي
تا بميراني ديو، تا بسوزاني دد
و برآري خورشيد از دماوند بلند

زنده یاد پروانه اسکندری فروهر
You can listen to the song by clicking on the “Real” or “MP3” icons at the top. Enjoy it and think as it provokes me to do. I salute Ali Tehrani for mixing his art with a distinct sense of social responsibility, a potent and powerful combination with the help of which people’s hearts and souls can be touched and transformed. http://svr76.ehostpros.com/~songsd76/blogs/songsdaily/archives/2006/11/oeoeuuu_uoeuuoe.html