“an instrumental jewel that would have corpses dancing in the graveyard.” – Keith “MuzikMan” Hannaleck, MuzikReviews.com, Jan 2011 [more]
Iran, Tehran, 1/1/11 – Unusual as it may sound, a musician of classical Persian background working in collaboration with a rock musician. “When There is More Beauty in the Contrary” is a single release by Negar Bouban and Salim Ghazi Saeedi featuring oud and electric guitar.
As the name suggests, in this song the aesthetic features are to be found in contradictory elements. “Combining traditionally dissimilar forces into one cohesive composition.” (Matthew Forss, ReviewYou.com, Jan 2011); even the composers themselves have different music backgrounds: Negar Bouban, a university lecturer in Musical Acoustics and an expert in Mesopotamia rooted musical systems versus Salim Ghazi Saeedi, a progressive rock and jazz fusion musician.
In a sense, this song is a portrayal of ancient lore versus modern technology. Negar says: “If you follow the story of oud and electric guitar through time, along with their historical common backgrounds, you’ll come to a view with beautiful contradiction in their respective time and cultures, yet binding past and present, tradition and modernity.”
In “When There is More Beauty in the Contrary” there are screaming guitars balanced with eastern enchantment of oud’s sound. Rock instrumentation and classical Persian ensemble find themselves in harmony, trying to recite the beauties that could be hidden behind self-constructed barriers of mind… Salim says: “In this song we both took an approach with no presumed framework. In terms of musical integrity among genres I think it is the only way to produce a creative yet genuine work”.
For watching this single’s video and more information please visit When There is More Beauty in the Contrary. You may also see Negar Bouban’s website at www.negarbouban.com
Iran, Tehran – Rock music is of course not rooted in Iran, but the enticement within the genre has strikingly pierced Salim Ghazi Saeedi’s heart in his hometown. Living in a country with total domination of traditional culture, Salim has globally released his 4th album, Iconophobic. An album as a “strong statement from Saeedi on life in his home city of Tehran” (Steven Reid, Sea of Tranquility webzine, Sep 2010) or let’s say “a stream of conscious story without words.” (Christy Claxton, Stave Magazine, Sep 2010 )