Jazz Mirrors Iran#1: Tehran

Tehran, sometimes spelled in French or German as Teheran, is a metropolis of 8.5 million people and the capital city of Iran. Witnessing many changes in the past 150 years, it was, and still is, a gigantic mechanism dealing with endless urban issues. Tehranis, sharp and open, and culturally closer to the people of those capital cities of the Eastern Europe, have two simultaneous battles to fight: one, to find a way out of the maddening traffic of the highways and streets of Tehran, and then, to find ways of expressing their social and political dissatisfaction in some creative and subversive ways.


But in spite of millions of dramas in the city - the way it is located in the south side of the majestic Alborz Mountain, the famous gardens, and vibrant urban life - Tehran was never a source of inspiration for composing music as much as it should have been.

For years, I thought the jazz world totally overlooked Tehran. My search showed no fascination with the city, while some big names of jazz have been guests of Tehran since 1950s, from Duke Ellington to Harry Sweets Edison. That disappointment ended when I discovered an album from, at least to me, an unknown jazz musician. I wasn’t completely wrong. He wasn’t a jazz musician, but a highly respected Austrian classical pianist: Friedrich Gulda. The Decca album of the live gig at Birdland café in New York City was a showcase for Gulda, in his first officially recorded jazz session in the US. And that’s when I discovered a swinging, vibrant picture of Tehran in a Gulda’s original, Teheran.

Friedrich Gulda (1930-2000) was trained as a classic pianist in Vienna. His debut concert was in 1944, and in 1950 his first American debut took place at legendary Carnegie Hall. The jazz bug must have bite him around the same time, because soon he started playing some swinging jazz and organizing jazz groups of his own. In 1956 he was known enough in the musical circuit to go back to the US, this time to lead a seven-piece band in a live set at Birdland.

Of course, Teheran, was played and recorded there, in June 29, 1956, but Richard Cook and Brian Morton unreasonably claim that Birdland album isn’t a live gig, but rather a studio session, yet the recording features an intro by Pee Wee Marquette, the Birdland’s midget emcee.

It opens with the alarming notes of Seldon Powell on tenor saxophone, in the form of call-and-response between the tenor and the rest of the horns and reeds. Trombone plays a beautiful bridge and then the whole group starts to swing. Powell proceeds, and then Phil Woods follows him. After Woods, comes the time for Gulda and his energetic solo on piano. 

Music pictures a busy day in Tehran. The horn-like sound of the opening bars is like the roar of the cars, rolling into streets of Tehran on a typical and already bustling morning. Movements in the streets, squares, pedestrians hurrying to work, buses overcrowded, and cabs crossing the red lights can be heard in Teheran. Somehow it reminds the listener of Miles Davis’s Move (a Denzel Best composition), from the Birth of the Cool sessions, where the same exuberant feeling is delivered by Miles Davis Nonet.

Teheran is recorded with a relatively small group, but Gulda’s imaginative writing has given the sound of a big band to the music. The powerful textures and the vibratoless tonality of it can be seen as a bridge between the classical roots of Gulda with a Cool sound of the 1950s America.

But how did Gulda capture Tehran so vividly in his tune? Has Gulda ever traveled to Iran? These questions kept me busy inquiring for a while, till the answer came from Paul Gulda, the son of late Friedrich. In an email exchange, in the last February he wrote to me:

"Sadly, as far as your question goes, there is little I can tell you. No, my father has never been to Teheran or any other Iranian city, nor India, or any Arab country. Why he would choose the title Teheran for his composition, one out of twelve he prepared for his ‘true American Jazz debut’ at Birdland, eludes me. As you mention, Isfahan [Ellington/Strayhorn composition], might have had something to do with it, although so different in mood. But there is a slight similarity in the little motive shaped with two 16th-notes and a longer one succeeding it forms the background."

"Also, my father was very fond of Dizzy Gillespie´s tune A night in Tunisia. What I can tell you is that my father had an almost lifelong fascination with the common ground shared by flamenco music, some of baroque music and Arab music, which resulted in him inviting both flamenco musicians and a group from Tunis to his festival in Ossiach, Austria in 1969/1971. This came to a culmination when he got into contact with Oud master Mounir Bashir around 1975, they repeatedly appeared on stage together in the following years and there is a recording of two duets they played at another festival designed by my father, Salzburg World Music Days, 1979."

The answer is not exactly what we expect to hear, but it is the truth.

How art was depicting Iran in the 1950s? Probably via representations of the country in the western media, and a “positive” picture that was officially endorsed by the axis of power in the US and Western Europe. The image of Iran of 1956, three years after American and British-led coup overthrew legitimate, democrat government of Dr Mossadegh, should be the image of a modernized, Americanized country which is an adequate answer to the imaginary Middle East of the West; Continuance of the fables of a Hollywood bio-pic of Omar Khayyam with thousands of vehicles driving up in the Pahlavi avenue.

Back to Gulda, let’s finish talking and give a listen to Teheran (the watch the accompaniment video of the pictures of Tehran from 1930 to 1960). Richard Cook, in his encyclopedia of jazz, writes: “[Gulda] seems like a genuine pioneer, whose music has sometimes been sniffily dismissed on the tedious and fallacious ground of being too European and unswinging.” Listening to Teheran, we know this can’t be true, and further explorations on Youtube will reveal that as Cook says "his music deserves a full reappraisal."