Iranian superstar unleashes joyful frenzy

The Age

5 hours ago

I had a little glimpse of what it would be like to be a god. From my box in Chatswood's Concert Hall, high above the front edge of the stage, I gazed down on a seething mass of humanity in what was effectively a mosh-pit, only with seating getting the way. The excitement of these people was as explosive as the music.
Mohsen Sharifian's folkloric music comes from the southern Iranian coast on the Persian Gulf, and for the local Iranian community Sharifian has the star power of Elvis, Michael Jackson and Taylor Swift rolled into one. He has done what Goran Bregovic did for Balkan music: locate it within the universal dance beat of a thumping bass drum – here an electronic wallop triggered by Morteza Palizdan's foot – and take it to the world.
From Harbour to Harbour 2 is the second incarnation of a project in which Sharifian's band, Lian, is joined by didgeridoo virtuoso William Barton and his mother, singer Aunty Delmae Barton. The concept, however, was better than the execution, as where I was sitting the bottom-end sound was sludgy, and the didgeridoo's nuances were largely lost.
Barton and Aunty Delmae only topped and tailed a generous show that started 35 minutes late, while we, in a new low for concert presentation, watched ads on a big screen. The rest embodied the instant party that's a Lian performance, with people dancing from the moment the band launched into the raucous Eshkeleh, and only stopping when Sharifian addressed us.
He's a virtuoso player of the ney-anban, an Iranian bagpipe with a sound that's shriller and even more transfixing than the Celtic version. His band also contains a second ney-anban player, his daughter Liana, whose main solo incorporated a dissonance that sliced through one like shards of glass, and whose instrument was adorned with a string of pom-poms, so when she twirled while playing, these gracefully arced around her.
From the moment the band's formidable density – having three hand-drummers, an oud player and an electric bassist – fully kicked in, you understood why such a piercing instrument is demanded. Sharifian also sings, although the primary vocalist was the impressive Aka Safavi, who also had to scale this wall of sound, and did so more as a seasoned professional than as the natural charismatic that is Sharifian. The lyrics, meanwhile, sometimes drew on Omar Khayyam's poetry.
More than anything this concert was the sound of joy: a joy that engulfed a room more used to hosting polite applause with rumps firmly glued to seats. Intermittently the mood could change to the pensive beauty of Reza Kashi's oud, but that pounding ersatz bass drum, intent on stoving in one's ribcage, was not to be denied, and soon enough we were back in a musical frenzy, with the ecstatic response it engendered. It was just a shame the sound was so muddy.