Mohammad-Mansour Hashemi's Essay: Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, the Voice of a Land's Wounded Pride

The Voice of a Land's Wounded Pride

In Memory of the Eternal Song of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian

Mohammad-Mansour Hashemi

Source: Café Catharsis Analytical Art Magazine

We all die. But we do not all live the same way. Mohammad-Reza Shajarian has passed from this world. We wished he could have been with us longer. Stayed longer. Sung longer. But death cares nothing for our wishes. Nothing can be done about death. With life, however, much can be done. It was our good fortune that we witnessed one of those many things. We witnessed someone attain such mastery and creativity in his work that his art lacked nothing. We witnessed someone create masterpieces before our very eyes.

Listening to Persian vocal music is a form of spiritual wayfaring. A journey through the layers of existence. Some object that Persian vocal music is sorrowful. Others respond that it is also joy-giving. Both groups are correct in a sense. Persian vocal music is both sorrowful and joyful. Both groups are incorrect in a sense. Persian vocal music is neither sorrowful nor joyful. Neither is its sorrow a tale of depression, nor its joy an expression of ecstatic madness. Giving one's heart to Persian vocal music is a spiritual journey toward detachment. Detachment from everyday sorrows and joys. Liberation from the mundane. Liberation from habit. Liberation from anxiety. Liberation from unbridled passions. If there is sorrow in it, it is that blessed sorrow Hafez asked of God. If there is joy in it, it is a joy alongside sorrow, as Sa'di said. Persian vocal music is the tale of seizing the moment, as Khayyam sought, and the complaint of fire, as Rumi desired. Persian vocal music is like Ferdowsi's world: magnificent and mysterious; aware of name and honor within the labyrinthine mystery of life and death. This is the ideal form of this music, its perfected form. The vocal music of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian possessed such perfection. Possesses such perfection.

I know tastes differ. People are diverse and desires are varied. The beauty of the world lies precisely in this. From upbringing and environment to brain biochemistry and neurology, all play a role in whether we like something or not. So I have no insistence that one must like Persian vocal music. Persian vocal music has no need for such insistence. I imagine those who can love it are not very many. Nor is there any need for them to be many. What matters is that each of us, despite our differing tastes, through proper acquaintance and intimacy with a form and genre, can understand, in our own way, the masterpiece quality of the masterpieces of any mold and genre. Unless, like those who wished to present the performance of this or that ordinary singer as equal to Shajarian's vocal art, political motives have sealed our eyes and ears, or we are so clueless that we cannot tell the difference between the performance of a tasnif and an āvāz. Resorting to metaphor, I might say that for many who sing ordinary songs, their singing is merely a line; when we hear those who sing better, we encounter a surface; and a complete vocal performance is a volume. Mohammad-Reza Shajarian created such a complete volume. For me, this complete volume possesses the noble splendor of the finest nasta'liq calligraphy, the detachment and liberation of the best shekasteh nasta'liq, the delicacy and colorfulness of the best Persian tilework and miniature painting, and the dignity and serenity of the finest Iranian architecture and garden design. That music and these arts I have named are all products of one spirit and one history. With all its ups and downs, its highs and lows. To my ears, which have loved Iranian music since adolescence and have spent all the sorrowful moments of my life and all its pleasant times with this music, and specifically with Shajarian's vocal art, this music and that voice are the house of Being. Just as Martin Heidegger said language is the house of Being.

Language is not only these words we use; language is everything with which we express ourselves. Western classical music is admirable. Who could fail to sense the delicacy of Mozart, the grandeur of Beethoven, the mystery of Bach, and the dread and hope of Wagner? And many others, and many others besides? And the intoxication of various different kinds of music. But I cannot pretend. I do not want to pretend. In thought, literature, and art, I am so familiar with being “modern” that I feel not the slightest debt to modernity. My enjoyment of modern things is not a performance. It is real. So I see no reason to feign a lack of enjoyment of tradition. Western music is not my home. For me, it is a luxurious hotel in which I am a guest. It is pleasurable, but it lacks the intimate atmosphere of home. Iranian music is the home of my being. The sound of the ney and setar and tar and santur and kamancheh and tonbak. And the singing of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, which is so full and overflowing that it lacks nothing even without instrumental accompaniment. As we have witnessed in Ali Hatami’s beloved “Del Shodegan” (The Lovestruck). Although instrumental accompaniment makes it more colorful and enchanting. Shajarian’s singing is a complete music. He did not need to be obsessively meticulous in enunciating the words. Because in his singing, poetry transforms into music. Part of the practice of listening to such singing is precisely this: we hear poems that we either have memorized beforehand, or, by the grace of Shajarian’s singing, will learn by heart through repeated listening. Iranian vocal music is like Iranian calligraphy, born alongside the word and speech. Born alongside poetry. Its legibility increases with intimacy with poetry. The pleasure of discovering the words is a doubled pleasure. Shajarian’s singing is the continuation of Persian speech. It is the persistence of the ghazal, from Saadi and Hafez to Sayeh and Shafiei Kadkani. It is the endurance of Persian poetry with Nima’s “Darug” (The Messenger) and Akhavan’s “Zemestan” (Winter). Shajarian is not a poet, but his singing is a sanctuary for Persian poetry. As long as the Persian language exists, and poetry exists, and the ghazal exists, as long as we understand Saadi’s eloquence, Shajarian’s singing will endure. And what great fortune it was that we lived in an era when sound could be recorded with desirable quality. Now, not only the fame of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, but his very singing remains as a memento in this revolving dome. The voice of love’s speech. A voice that will tint the sanctuary of every person of heart with the color of affection, and will bestow depth upon the solitude of every thinking person in this land.

Shajarian’s voice was a gift. Few people possess such a gift. But that was not the whole story. Human beings derive less pleasure from existing natural beauty than from the beauty they themselves make and create. Mohammad-Reza Shajarian was endowed with that kind of healthy pride that drives an individual to do something worthy of their own high standards. To build and create something according to their own sublime taste. He learned from whomever he could. He did whatever he could. All so that in what he created, namely Iranian vocal music, he might produce a masterpiece. He attained this rank because, alongside that God-given gift, he possessed a character he had chiseled, bit by bit. Mohammad-Reza Shajarian was one of those people who fashion themselves in such a way that you cannot help but admire and love them. Apart from narcissists who, at the core of their being, feel a deep sense of inferiority, apart from mediocrities who seek a flaw in others’ work and can speak for a lifetime about a single misread poem just to find some solace, everyone else takes pleasure in seeing healthy pride. Every healthy human being admires beauty. Shajarian had the fortune that, with his beautiful pride, he could be the voice of the wounded pride of an ancient yet dignified land. With his intelligence, he could be the voice of a people whose silence is always full of unspoken things. Simin Behbahani said with all firmness and solidity: “I am not a twig to be bent; I am a tall, steadfast pine / Solidity is my essence, even if they cut me to pieces …//… Tell the willow to tremble, tell the wind to rage / May I never know the shame of the willow and the wind; I am a tall, steadfast pine.” This land has endured thanks to such tall, steadfast ones, and Mohammad-Reza Shajarian was one of the tallest of those steadfast ones in our time. He was not, in the vulgar, handy, and trivial sense of the word, but in the true sense of the term, the “artist” of a “land.” The representative of a history. And how good it is that the artist of this land and the representative of this history created masterpieces. His songs, especially in the first two decades after the revolution, are undoubtedly masterpieces. As long as Iran exists and the Persian language exists, the name of Mohammad-Reza Shajarian will live on, with songs that carry the scent of rain-soaked earth in the heart of the desert.