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SBS Australia
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- SBS Australia
'A special language': This Iranian musician is in Australia to connect Indigenous traditions
From left: Mohsen Sharifian, William Barton, Aunty Delmae Barton and Liana Sharifian will be performing in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth. Credit: Brendan Read / Keith Saunders / Unsplash / Jamie Davies / SBS Concerts in major Australian cities will showcase traditional Iranian and Indigenous instruments. Iranian bagpipe musician Mohsen Sharifian performs with the aim of 'keeping Bushehri and Iranian folk music alive'. Indigenous didgeridoo artist William Barton says the two countries face similar challenges in preserving culture. Mohsen Sharifian, a musician and composer from the port of Bushehr in Iran, will be performing in Australia alongside Indigenous artists William Barton and his mum, Aunty Delmae Barton, in a tour called Harbour to Harbour. Sharifian's folkloric ensemble, Lian Band, and the First Nations artists will come together to blend the ney-anban (Persian bagpipe) and didgeridoo, traditional Iranian and Indigenous instruments. While their music may sound different, there is a common purpose among the artists from Iran and Australia. "This is a special language that can bring us together, make us talk and connect our cultures to each other. When cultures and music connect, other things get closer," Sharifian told SBS Persian. "This is happening so we can talk more with each other, discuss our concerns, and pour our hearts out. "All of our passion is for the music of our motherland. A type of music with a rich historical background that is also the storyteller of many parts of our society and the Australian Indigenous community." Sharifian's home is the city of Bushehr, in the south of Iran, located beside the Persian Gulf. As one of the country's most important commercial ports, the city's population has been shaped by people from diverse cultures and countries over the past hundred years. According to Sharifian, this had a significant impact on Bushehr's music. "Music grows from culture, and wherever it is based on their culture and geography, they have their own type of music," he explained. "Bushehr had different connections with people from different countries, and its music now has a poly-national shape ... All of these have given Bushehr's music a special and unique shape." Sharifian started his musical activity with Lian Band in 1993, with the aim of "keeping Bushehri and Iranian folk music alive". However, Iranian musicians must go the extra mile to save their music. While music and concerts are generally permitted in the Islamic Republic of Iran, music production and distribution face strict regulations, as women are not allowed to sing and musicians need permits from the Ministry of Guidance and Culture. "There are many issues in front of Iranian music, and no one can deny it, (including) strictness in giving permits to concerts," Sharifian said. "There are some people in Iran who have their own concerns, and don't vibe with music and have their own stance. We respect them, but this will not make us forget our duty. "Since ethnic music needs more support, a lack of that frustrates many musicians as they need more attention." Thousands of kilometres away, here in the other harbour in Australia, while music might not face similar restrictions, Batron said that he and Sharifian both face "the strong parallel paths of keeping their culture alive". "It's the same thing where we have to sustain and nurture our culture through the performing arts," Barton told SBS Persian. "That's our ceremony, and so that's what we are, that's what's in our DNA." Ceremonies are an important part of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. There are ceremonies for every significant event, including coming of age, marriage, birth and death. Music is one part of these ceremonies, Barton explained. "Music is integral. It's very integral. It's integral to the day that you're born into this world as an Indigenous person ... It helps keep storytelling alive," he said. "Whatever it takes to help sustain that connection to Country, we do that through music." Barton, a descendant of the Kalkadunga tribe, was born in Mount Isa, Queensland. The renowned composer grew up in a musical and diverse family and learned to play the didgeridoo when he was seven years old. The didgeridoo, also known as yidaki, is an instrument made by Aboriginal people at least 1,000 years ago. "Over time, [the didgeridoo or yidaki], intermarriages between different tribes, and it spreads ... and it has its own language to each landscape, and that's important to understand," Barton said. He will be playing this instrument alongside the Sharifian's ney-anban, a wind instrument which is commonly found around Bushehr. According to Barton, the two instruments are played with a similar technique. "That's pretty amazing, because he (Sharifian) uses the circular breathing [technique] as well," he said. "My crossover technique on the didgeridoo or yidaki, as it's known, as well, is the circular breathing ... In and out through the nose, but we store the oxygen in our diaphragm, kind of like the bagpipe." But besides the meeting of two instruments, the artists share a mutual purpose in bringing their cultures together side by side, something beyond the sounds. Sharifian said: "We are distanced a lot from each other, and this distance is increasing day by day." "Let's get together and get away from all the sorrow and chaos that is in this world, and listen to music from far away. "Let's not lose each other in this world." Share this with family and friends Independent news and stories connecting you to life in Australia and Persian-speaking Australians. Understand the quirky parts of Aussie life.
ABC News
31-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Bush Gothic on the fine line between pleasure and pain, and director Netia Jones on Purcell's wild semi-opera The Fairy Queen
Bush Gothic are 'unafraid of Australian songs'. From colonial-era folk songs to the Divinyls, their latest album What Pop People Folk This Popular is a showcase of what the band does best: dreamy, detailed, genre-bending music in conversation with Australian musical history. Jenny M Thomas and Dan Witton join Andy. Netia Jones is an English opera director and she's in Sydney to take on Henry Purcell's odd but beautiful 'Restoration Spectacular' The Fairy Queen for Pinchgut Opera. Under rain on a tin roof of the rehearsal room, she and Andy sit to talk about the peculiarities of the piece, and of English language opera. Bush Gothic are on tour: 7 – 8 June National Celtic Festival, Portarlington 13 June Ararat Town Hall, Ararat 14 June Wheatsheaf Hotel, Adelaide 21 June Fitzroy Town Hall, Naarm/Melbourne 22 June Northern Arts Hotel, Castlemaine 27 – 29 June Festival of Voices, nipaluna/Hobart Pinchgut Opera presents The Fairy Queen: 7 – 14 June at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in Sydney. Music heard in the interview with Bush Gothic: Title: Girls in Our Town Artist: Margret RoadKnight Composer: Bob Hudson Album: Margaret RoadKnight Label: Infinity Title: Girls in Our Town Artist: Bush Gothic Composer: Bob Hudson Album: What Pop People Folk This Popular Label: Fydle Records Title: Adeline Artist: Bush Gothic Composer: Gus Unger-Hamilton, Hans Zimmer, Joe Newman, Thom Green Album: What Pop People Folk This Popular Label: Fydle Records Title: Wreck of the Dandenong Artist: Bush Gothic Composer: trad. Album: What Pop People Folk This Popular Label: Fydle Records Title: Pleasure and Pain Artist: Bush Gothic Composer: Holly Knight, Mike Chapman Album: What Pop People Folk This Popular Label: Fydle Records Title: Freedom on the Wallaby Artist: Bush Gothic Composer: trad. after the poem by Henry Lawson Album: What Pop People Folk This Popular Label: Fydle Records In the interview with Netia Jones: Title: 'O Let Me Weep' (The Plaint), from The Fairy Queen Artist: Carolyn Sampson (soprano), Gabrieli Consort/Paul McCreesh Composer: Henry Purcell Album: The Fairy Queen 1692 Label: Signum Classics Title: I know a bank… from A Midsummer Night's Dream Artist: Alfred Deller (Oberon), London Symphony Orchestra/Benjamin Britten Composer: Benjamin Britten, libretto Peter Pears after Shakespeare Album: A Midsummer Night's Dream Label: Decca The Music Show was made on Gadigal, Gundungurra and Turrbal Yuggera Country Technical production by Dylan Prins
BBC News
11-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Peggy Seeger loving life in 'iconic' Oxfordshire village
"I rent in an iconic village in south east Oxford and I've become part of the community."Folk music legend Peggy Seeger, 89, is about to hit the road for one last tour of the UK and Ireland with her 25th solo album said while she misses the stage, she now enjoys walks in Iffley, Oxfordshire, where she has been living since more than 70 years of music-making and activism, Seeger said she "never tried to be famous" but just "do what I do, as good as possible". "I've had some absolutely wonderful feedback from people and they seem to really know how to listen to it because it's not an easy the album," she said of her latest contains nine new songs and two reinterpretations, one of which is The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - a timeless love song that folk singer, broadcaster and activist Ewan MacColl wrote for her in pair went on to make more than 40 albums together, marry and have said: "It's a strange thing because people think that my husband and I both fell disastrously in love with each other, but we didn't."I ran away from him for three years, he was not my idea of what I wanted to do with my life."But despite her resistance and a 20-year age difference, they got together and Seeger said the truth about it was written in her memoir."The first kiss I got from him just curled my toes," she said. Peggy Seeger on her husband Ewan MacCollPeggy Seeger: The First Time Ever I Saw Your FaceHow Folk Songs Should Be Sung But in a Radio 4 interview, she said she had become "weary" of talking about the past. After MacColl's death in 1989, she moved back to America where she decided that "really, my true home where I wanted to live until I die, was the UK". "My children and my grandchildren are here and I know this country better than I know the United States," she said."I love this country - all four nations of it."She said that in Iffley, it was the "first time I've been really part of a community", adding: "I'm now on the village committee and my job is to raise money."She also continues to be involved in environmental concerns, joining a campaign against building on two green has made a film called The Mother, which she said will be shown around Oxford "because it's important to save as much of Oxford's green land that we can". Seeger said she "loves" walking along the River Thames, going down to the Iffley lock, meeting "some absolutely wonderful friends" and visiting the village shop."But I don't get up to much in Oxford because I'm not very fit," she said."I love the Christ Church garden but, generally, I will go outside of Oxford because I can't park [in the city], so I'll maybe go out to Waterperry Gardens or drive up to Burford." Seeger said her upcoming tour "is going to be fabulous".She said: "Part of it grieves me because there's going to be so many friends there and I won't have time to see them. "I miss the stage but I'm not physically up to it anymore."Her message to budding musicians, she said, would be: "Examine your reasons."It's almost impossible to make living from it - venues closed down one after the other when Covid hit ... the competition is fierce and you have to really be something different to capture the audience."Seeger said that when she came to the UK, she had "the right combination of who I was"."I was female, young, reasonably good-looking," she said. "I was American and I played a longneck banjo and I was greeted by one of the main folklorists in the world."I've never tried to be famous, I don't want to be, I just want to do what I do as good as possible." You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
