My love affair with the Oud starts with my love for Persian tradition music. I grew up in Canada, surrounded by Persian culture in my family and community. My father was the only Canadian I was close with, so Persian culture was the foremost culture I was acquainted with. Growing up in Canada is a very multicultural experience, and I was fortunate to be able to be immersed in Persian culture from a young age.
I was exposed to Persian music through my family. My aunt and cousin were singers and occasionally put on amateur concerts with other members of the Persian community in Vancouver, BC. It was during one of these concerts when I was 10 years old when I first saw and heard a Santoor. My parents previously wanted me to play piano, but I wasn’t that interested. I thought if they wanted me to try music, maybe I could try learning Santoor.
I was lucky. A family member had an old santoor that wasn’t being used, and we borrowed it so I could start lessons. We also knew there was a newcomer in town that was teaching santoor at a Persian bookstore in North Vancouver. My mom drove me 45 mins one way from Coquitlam to North Vancouver once a week to take santoor lessons with my teacher Afshin Keymanesh, a political refugee from Iran, at the back of a Persian book store. It was 1994, lessons cost $20 per hour.
These car rides would become my favorite time of the week. My mom and I would listen to all the Persian music we could get our hands on. A particular favorite was the Kamkar Ensemble from Kurdistan, Iran, and Parviz Meshkatian. The daf was one of my favorite instruments to hear during those days. I often imagined groups of strong-handed daf players with veins popping from their hands on rooftops. The sound was like nothing I’d even heard before. Fortunately, the book store where lessons were held also sold cassette tapes.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw a santoor up close. It was like a new universe was open before me; each string a galaxy that I could point to and travel to. At the same time, as I touched the santoor and held the mallets, it felt like I was being touched by a thing of the past, an ancient relic that had it’s own stories to tell and reveal.
I owe a lot to my first teacher, Afshin. I was forced to use Farsi. And he was above all, encouraging. I’ll never forget the first time I had the inclination to try writing music. I didn’t really know what I was doing. After showing him my first attempt at composing a few lines, instead of discouraging me, he actually encouraged me and corrected my mistakes.
I ended up showing some talent. I was his best student. For the first time in my life I knew what it was like to be good at something. It was a great feeling. I was able to play some very technical pieces of Parviz Meshkatian after 1 year of lessons.
I auditioned for my elementary school’s talent show and the close of 4th grade. I played Parviz Meshkatian’s Chaharmezrab-e Segah from his album “Vatan-e man”. My teacher loved it. I was instantly accepted into the talent show.
I was then known as a santoor player, and I occasionally started to perform at community events.
After a few years, I started to get bored of the santoor. It was difficult to keep up the motivation to practice. I ended up quitting for a period of time.
I tried quitting music several times in my life until my early 20’s. But music would keep on creeping back into my life.
In my teens, I started listening to rock and heavy metal. I taught myself guitar with a guitar method book, and became obsessed with Jimi Hendrix. At one point, during my high school years I was playing santoor, guitar, and trombone.
Significant influences
A pivotal time during my teens was my exposure to a very musical family, the Honari’s. I spent a lot of time during my teens with this family getting exposed to more Persian music and playing music together with the father, Reza Honari and their two sons, Hamin and Hedayat.
(In May, 2023 Reza Honari passed away. Out of all the teachers I had in music, I spent the most time and learned the most from him through recording projects and performances over a period of 25 years. I owe much of my music to his influence. He is well-remembered and greatly missed.)
I wanted to continue studying music after high school. I wanted to go study Jazz at Capilano College, like some friends I knew. But in grade 12 I ended up getting side tracked by fears and worries and gave it up. No one really discouraged me from studying music, but didn’t make it sound like it was a great choice either.
It was in high school that I encountered the oud for the first time: Microsoft Encarta 97. There was an interactive music of the world section and when you hovered your mouse over Egypt a short 30 second sound clip of Hamza El-Din playing Lamma Badda Yatathanna would come on. That sound haunted me ever since. And that’s how my love affair started with the Oud.
I had only heard that sound a few times listening to the many cassette tapes of Persian music I had.
I ended up getting my first oud from Iran. My high school friend’s mom brought it back for me. It wasn’t much, but it was all I could find.
It was not a very playable instrument. But I started taking lessons with Hossein Behroozinia in Vancouver when I was 18.
I had to cut my lessons short due to an opportunity to volunteer and live overseas for 1 year. I took my instruments with me, and continued to play guitar, santoor, and oud.
When I returned to Canada, I tried to do other things with my life, but music made it’s way back when I got inspired to learn how to play daf. My good friend Hamin Honari taught me how to play and eventually I was bewitched again by my love for music and decided it was time to continue my studies on the Oud.
During my time of studying the Oud with Hossein Behroozinia, I was active as a soloist and with several local ensembles, the Honari Ensemble, Sangha, the Big World Band, and the Intercultural Orchestra.
It was during this I was exposed to Turkish Oud through Hossein Behroozia. He had returned from participating in an Oud festival and brought back a signed CD by Yurdal Tokcan. This style of Oud playing was very different from what I was used to. It came to me at a time when I was feeling a little bit of frustration with Persian style Oud playing due to what I believed was an awkward position the Oud has in a Persian ensemble, and it’s challenge with performing the right nuance.
This style, which was completely new to me came at the perfect time. After studying with Hossein Behroozinia for five years or more, I realized that I needed to learn more about the Oud. Around 2008 I started to get exposed to Turkish and Arabic Oud styles and decided that I needed to explore these traditions too in order to really learn the Oud.
Arabic Music
I started to read and listen to everything I could about Arabic music. But it sounded very foreign to me.
I’ll never forget the first time I listened to Farid al-Atrash. It made me sick, I had to shut it off. I was surprised at how many false notes he hit, and he was supposed to be the king of the Oud. The amount of quick modulations was also off-putting. It was a completely different aesthetic than I was accustomed to.
It took me some time to come around to this new aesthetic. Sometimes I heard things which I could relate to, and I used these aspects as sign posts along my journey of discovering this music.
It wasn’t until I heard Simon Shaheen perform in North Vancouver in 2008 that I was exposed to a very high level of Arabic musicianship and craft. Nothing I heard up until then was very appealing to me. I started to see the potential from this time.
The greater all-encompassing modality
It was also during this that I was exposed to the music of Ross Daly, who is by far my biggest artistic influence to this day.
I found that I have a lot in common with him having a mixed background, an outsider to different traditions. I grew up in Canada, but I played Persian music, yet I was still so far removed from the contemporary musical sphere in Iran that I could still consider myself an outsider. I always felt one step behind the current, and I was also an outsider to Arabic and Turkish traditions.
In that way, Ross Daly’s story resonated with me. And I learned everything I could about the kind of music he wrote and performed.
This has brought me to where I am today. I am not purely one tradition over another. My music is a mix of modal styles and entities. It is not Persian, Arabic, or Turkish, but modal music.
I think a lot of people might misunderstand this about me when I see the work I do on YouTube and on my website OudforGuitarists.com.
I consider myself foremost, a Persian musician, versed also in the traditions of the Ottoman and greater Syrian sphere.
I was lucky to finally have a chance to study Turkish makam with Ross Daly at his online Labyrinth workshops during the 2020-2021 pandemic. This marked the beginning of truly understanding the foundation of modern Turkish music which has it’s origins in Ottoman music.
I am now incorporating everything I know about these three musical traditions in my playing, performance and teaching methods.
OudForGuitarists
With the encouragement (more like pushing) of my wife, I started a website dedicated to the Oud. This website was originally intended for English speakers who encountered the Oud at some time and became enamored by it and want to learn it properly and effectively. I knew a lot of English speakers who came to the Oud were usually guitar players, and hence the name, “OudForGuitarists”.
Since 2013, I have published over 100 blogs articles about all features of the music and the Oud, accompanied by my YouTube channel which has over 23,000 subscribers, and over 300 videos.
Over the last 10 years, I am humbled and grateful to have assisted over 800 Oud learners worldwide to study and improve their skills.
Without the formidable push of my wife, I would never have embarked on being an educator of middle eastern music.