Jazz Film in Iran - A First Time Retrospective

The centenary of jazz is being celebrated in a place you would least expect: Iran. 

A mini retrospective of jazz films, currently playing at the Cinematheque of The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, is the first time ever in post-revolutionary Iran.

The Museum famous for its priceless collection of modernist art (including works by Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Kandinsky, Pollack and many more) and also recently in the news due to cancellation of a major exhibition in Berlin, hosts a cozy, popular cinema inside its stylishly beautiful building. The cinematheque, shut down for 7 years, was reopened recently, with an array of nicely curated seasons.

Jazz Mirrors Iran#9: Persian Village

Postscript January 6, 2016: "Paul Bley, a jazz pianist whose thoughtful but intuitive commitment to advanced improvisation became widely influential, died of natural causes Sunday. He was 83."


What I hear in jazz takes on Persia, aka Iran, is like Montesquieu's Persian Letters in reverse. If Persian Letters was composed of letters exchanged between two imaginary Persian noblemen traveling in Europe, jazz pieces about Persia are like composers' and musicians' mind journeys in Persia. As Montesquieu would say, you might find in jazz compositions about Iran "a sort of romance, without having expected it."

In the Jazz Mirrors Iran series, several different musicians and pieces introduced and they were all connected together by a sort of a chain. The chain was Persia, a dream land where even the traffic can be (pictured) as harmonious. (see Gulda)

Back to Montesquieu's concept of an imaginary encounter between east (Iran) and west (Europe), the author talks about how the travelers (in this case, musicians) were struck with the marvellous and extraordinary, each in his own style. "Reasoning cannot be intermixed with the story," remarks Montesquieu, "because the personages not being brought together to reason." Therefore, Fats Waller's Persian Rug or Lloyd Miller's Pari Ruu are always "connected with a manifestation of surprise, or astonishment, and not with the idea of inquiry, much less with that of criticism." That is the Iran I hear and see in jazz.

Jazz Mirrors Iran#8: In a Persian Market

The whole color spectrum reflected in tasbihs, hanging from the shop windows. The smell of rosewater perfumes. Carpets and rugs piled inside doorless, windowless shops and a carney-like salesman shouting outside, encouraging curious pedestrians to go in and see the “best.” Kebab shops, sending the smell of rice and meat to the air, next to a fabric shop that no lady can resist stopping by and bargaining with the humorous, assured salesman. This is the daily scene in the bazaar of Mashhad (where I lived most of my life), Grand Bazaar of Tehran, or the dream-like Vakil Bazaar of Shiraz, a Persian market somewhere in Iran where its colors, noises, smells and movements are uniquely inspiring for any poet, musician, filmmaker and anyone interested in turning the sights and sounds of the daily street life into a piece of art. [above photo: ceiling of a bazaar in Iran. Photography by Reza Hakimi.]

Now, the jazz connection, or rather the story of a song: The story begins in England, where the Birmingham born son of an engraver, Albert Ketèlbey (1875-1959) wrote this week’s theme tune, In a Persian Market. In 1920, Ketèlbey, a busy composer in London’s West End music halls, probably without ever being to a Persian market, used his imagination to depict a busy day in a Persian bazaar. His compositions soon became a popular hit, recycled many times, and even found its way to the jazz songbook.

Jazz Mirrors Iran#7: Jazz, the Samarkand Way

If you’re a jazz aficionado, you’ll immediately assume from the cool sound of contra-bass, clarinet-bass and brushed drums that the played track [here] is a west coast jazz from the mid 1950s. The carefully established musical textures and easy-going swing of the piece with some nice urban colorizations only make you more sure.

But take a look at the album cover and you’ll see every guess, except maybe the date, is wrong. Hard to believe, but what you’re listening to is a track by Aminollah Hussein, or André Hossein, the French-Iranian composer, famous enough in France for being the father to the French movie star and director, Robert Hossein.

Jazz Mirrors Iran#6: Paraded Beauty

Women in Iran: a hot topic, no matter how you look at it, from European feminists studying the country to Iranian men sipping cups of “smuggled” Starbucks coffee while cruising up Tehran’s Jam Avenue. Whatever helps to glamorize these young ladies on the streets comes to their service: heavy make-up, flamboyant haircuts which under the veil turns the head into a piece of early Cubist art, bold colors that remind one of Gauguin in Martinique, tight dresses that generously exhibit the female figure, high heels and leather boots that make the infamous Betty Page look like a modest housewife - cigarette smokers, driving behind the wheel of expensive sport cars in northern Tehran, listening to loud music - patrons of Tehran’s reputation as the nose job capital of the world, as if all Persian girls rival themselves with Nicole Kidman in how properly whittled noses should look.

photo by Reza Hakimi

Art and culture aside, what impresses Western visitors in Iran are these apparent dichotomies of beauty and street fashion, all the more exotic to foreign eyes as defiance within the stringent rules of the Islamic Republic regime. “Women are so chic there,” Mark Cousins, an Irish filmmaker told me one time while making a documentary in Iran, “it’s like a European country, but a strange kind of Europe.”

Pari Ruu, Lloyd Miller and the Heliocentrics

Jazz Mirrors Iran#5: Strictly for the Persians

For my fifth installment in Jazz Mirrors Iran, I'll look at a tune from a third country in which the secretive consociation between the American art form and Persian culture took place: France.


If you were in Paris during the cold winter of 1941, walking by the Seine and watching the German barracks, you could whistle a beautiful tune by Alix Combelle Orchestra, a song ironically called Strictement pour les Persans, or in English, Strictly for the Persians. 

Strictement Pour Les Persans (Strictly for Persians) - Alix Combelle Orchestra

Paris’ underground resistance did not stay paralyzed for too long. To write the French off as cowards or conceding would be dismissive and inaccurate. A Parisian writer at the time was “incapable of surviving for long hiding, he would sell his soul to see his name in print,” silenced essayist Jean Guehenno observed. “He believes that he is French literature and thought and that they will die without him.” Satre himself had stated that artists and writers had a duty to tell the rest of France “not to be ruled by Germans.”

We all know that jazz played a significant role in uniting African-Americans under the oppressive Jim Crow laws. In Paris of 1941, even as a borrowed art form, it still manifested the self-empowerment to create a nationalistic identity at a point where the country was already fractured into rubble. Before the Nazi invasion of France, when news of an eventual war reached Paris, many African-American expatriate musicians left to return to the United States. Their sudden departure left the active French jazz scene on its own, and club owners found themselves without any entertainers or live music to supply the demand of tasteful customers.

Jazz Mirrors Iran#4: An American in Tehran

photo by Reza Hakimi

In the fourth installment of my ten-week series exploring Iran through the world of jazz, I've looked at Iranian music through the melodies of one its most dedicated ambassadors: Lloyd Miller.

Lloyd Miller is no typical fan boy. If there’s one thing to know about him, it’s that he doesn’t like mainstream music, likely most of the stuff on your iPod. Groupie he is not, calling most of today’s new hits “jumpy ugly obnoxious rock junk that has permeated the whole world like leprosy destroying everyone’s musical tastes and minds.” You could write him off as an aging music snob, but then you’d be missing out on one of the edgiest pioneers in building the musical bridge between East and West.

                                  Segah – Lloyd Miller                                 

If there’s a more important thing to know about Lloyd Miller, it’s his love of Persian music. Born in 1938 to a ballet dancer and a professional clarinetist, he began learning piano at the age of three. By his early teens, he taught himself banjo, clarinet and cornet. There is scarcely a single instrument today that he hasn’t mastered or at least experimented. In 1957 his father, now a professor at the University of Southern California, was invited to Iran in order to oversee the creation of University of Tehran’s business school. Nineteen-year-old Lloyd, already a staple in the American jazz scene, came along, mostly so that his parents could keep him away from a drug culture that permeated into many music circles. Miller himself looked at the trip as a spiritual quest, searching for a new musical language that he found partially in traditional jazz and the more modern Bop, but still felt incomplete.

Jazz Mirrors Iran#3: Iranic

Vank Cathedral in Iran [photo by Reza Hakiminejad]

Two weeks ago I began a ten-week series (that now I might extend it to 12!) exploring jazz that reflects a part of Iran, both as an actual place on the map and as a pure creation of art. This is Iran according to American and European jazz musicians of the 20th century. In the third installment, I look at the "ironies" shared between a culture and a musical form.

From the Shahs of Sunset to the Mullahs of Qom, Iran stands a Catch-22 waddling to find its way between Bravo and Basij, Marxist and Muslim, youth and establishment, sincerity and tar’ruf. Sound confusing? Welcome to Irani irony, a culture where expectations are implied but never stated, perhaps the only one where you’ll find yourself politely chastised. To navigate in it is an improvisational act of its own, an interplay where actions depend on relational anticipation. This is the game of Persian life.

.                         Iranic by Jimmy Giuffre                        .        

The emergence of free-form jazz in the 1950s, pioneered amongst others by composer and multi-instrumentalist Jimmy Giuffre, was no less a paradox than the musical form's emergence itself, challenging the limitations of established bebop, hard bop and modal, breaking down standards that characterized traditional jazz. Where bebop treated musicians as interpreters, free jazz placed them at the forefront as the tune's dominant voice. Framework from jazz charts gave way to improvisation. Professionals, in their experimentation came off to the naked ear as amateurish, as if they were students doing their best to sound good. Not so confident to play constantly and seamlessly, they pause, wait, look at each other, and think deeply for what they should play for the next chorus.

Jazz Mirrors Iran#2: Persian Rug

Last week, I began a ten-week series exploring jazz that reflects a part of Iran, both as an actual place on the map and as a pure creation of art. This is Iran according to American and European artists of the 20th century. It is also the same country that makes daily headlines in the news, yet it is music that brings it a far greater truth than any pundit on a TV screen. In the second installment of this ten-week series exploring Iran through the world of jazz, let's gaze our eyes down to the magnificent floor coverings that inspired the classic jazz standard tune.

Iran as a country has long been a contested commodity in the modern era, its politics so pervasive, hardly a piece of artwork makes it abroad without some sort of oppositional branding -- the mere fact that it comes from Iran automatically makes it a piece of creative dissidence. The one medium that manages to evade any type of political baggage is not the artwork we hang on our walls, but the adorned canvas we lay out on our floors --Persia’s rugs. Like Iran’s version of Wall Street, these carpets, often called an Iranian’s stock or share, are more than a hypnosis of vivid colors and mesmerizing patterns: they’re a woven record of a country and civilization dating back over 2,500 years, and for most Iranians, a first encounter with the visual blueprints that we come to associate as art.

Three versions of Persian Rug which I'm going to discuss later

Jazz Mirrors Iran#1: Tehran

photo by Reza Hakiminejad

Imagine this: A tenor saxophone and bass mimic in sound the pace of rush hour walkers. A trumpet, sounding like a car horn, pops in and out, pulsating along with the beat of the drummer, whose brushes on the snare create an interplay that brings to life the image of a bustling urban city.

No cobblestone streets or the smell of Parisian bread; no green leaves overhanging narrow passageways or the sound of French in the background. This is not Europe. It’s Iran that is being depicted in cool jazz tones.

Each Monday for the next ten weeks I will feature a jazz tune that reflects a part of Iran, both as an actual place on the map and as a pure creation of art. This is Iran according to American (or non-American) artists in the 20th century. It is the same country that makes daily news headlines, but thanks to the masters of misinformation in the media, the more that is heard, the less that is learned.

                           Teheran- Friedrich Gulda                              

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.

All the Young Persian Cannibals [A Memoir]

The readers of this blog have probably noticed that lately I've been focusing on jazz in Hollywood films. There is no particular reason for this interest, except re-watching some of the films I had seen light years away and becoming slightly nostalgic about some of them, especially the one I'm going to mention today.

In the late 1990s, me and my two sisters, all of us in our teens, became fascinated by a film called Young Wolves about the life of a good-looking trumpet player and a troubled girl in the Deep South. However, later we discovered that the original name, just altered to Young Wolves in Persian-dubbed version, was All the Fine Young Cannibals. Again, after some years I heard some rumor that the film was loosely based on the life of Chet Baker, which considering the casting of Robert Wagner, one can argue that MGM producers wanted the young Chet and his rebellious life as the role model for the film's protagonist.

Robert Wagner and Natalie Wood

Far of the Middle: Ellington's 1963 State Department Tour

The third State Department tour of the Middle East which sent Duke Ellington and His Orchestra on the bumpy roads of the troubled region became legendary mostly thanks to the Grammy winner Far East Suite, released four years after the journey. First contradiction was the name: with exception of a tune from Japan's tour of 1964 (Ad Lib on Nippon), the rest were songs about and inspired by the Middle East.  

It was a time of social and political discomfort in the States. The racial conflicts had reached a new bloody height and the tension had become explicit and outward. Just three months after global exposition of the image of police dogs attacking Afro-Americans and a cop pinning a black woman to the pavement in Birmingham , Duke was sent overseas by the State Department to spread America's message of democracy and brotherhood to the rest of the world, ironically, through the art of African-Americans.

The Washingtonian Ellington was a natural-born ambassador, and in regard to his flawless sense of management of the orchestra, an adept politician. He was also, in John Edward Hasse's words, "secure, self-confident, optimistic, prideful, aristocrat in demeanor, charming, well-mannered, easy with people from all walks of life, religious, ambitious, clever, didactically oriented, street smart, shrewd in business, restive with categories, stylish dresser, and a growing individualist." Sounds very American indeed. 

Jazz Mirrors Iran

Happy Nowruz to Iranian Readers! Peace to you!

Iran-- sometimes known as Persia, with an echo of 1001 Nights and dreamy cities of wine and poetry. As a name, a real place or an imaginary land from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, to the media propaganda of the recent months about nuclear developments, sanctions and military action, it remains a country held victim to misrepresentation and lazy awareness.

It is very much the same ignorance that for centuries silenced African-American artists and communities, who developed jazz as the art form to revise the human condition and to remove the barriers between “us” and “them” in a democratic language that knew no boundaries. Jazz, as the art that fights against various types of segregation, could be a myth itself. But the myth of jazz as something for all human beings, regardless of race, nationality, gender and age is so strong that it can still feed our desire to explore and to change.

In the coming weeks, I'll write about ten pieces of jazz music (specially designed to welcome the arrival of spring and Nowruz, Iranian New Year), presented on Aslan Media, about or influenced by Iran.

Radio Hawkins#25: Lloyd Miller

Last night, my final broadcast of the Jazz for Iran radio programme was dedicated to the music and life of Dr. Lloyd Miller whom I introduced in a couple of posts back. If you've missed his amazing life story and his incredible achievements in exploring new sounds in jazz, by creating a mesmerizing fusion of this music with Persian and Middle Eastern instruments, you can still read it here. The audio file presented here is my selection of the songs, recorded from 1961 in Paris to late 1960s in Utah, and finally Lloyd's latest musical output in London, 2010.

My commentary and intros are obviously in Farsi, but I promise to keep it minimum and let the music speaks for itself. 

جاز براي ايران

اپيزود بيست و پنجم

اين اپيزود پايان سري اول راديو هاوكينز خواهد بود و تا چند هفته بعد از اين، برنامۀ تازه اي پخش نخواهد شد. برنامه هاي قديمي هم چنان در اين سايت و در سايت جزنات قابل دسترسي هستند

موضوع اين برنامه: موسيقي دكتر لويد ميلر

بيوگرافي او را در اين جا بخوانيد

Lloyd Miller, a Sufi of Jazz [Farsi]

Read it in English

لويد ميلر، صوفي موسيقي جاز

در سال 1336 یک خانواده متمول آمریکایی، بعد از سفري كه از آمريكا به ژاپن، خاور دور و سپس هند رسانده بودشان، بلاخره وارد مقصد نهايي، ایران شدند. پدر و پسر هر دو موزیسین‌هاي جاز و اهل کالیفرنیای جنوبی بودند. لوید میلر، فرزند نوزده سالۀ این خانواده، از سیاحت در این سرزمین‌های دور به دنبال چیزی می‌گشت که در موسيقي جاز سنتی و جنبش مدرن باپ بخشي از آن را یافته بود، اما هنوز براي پاسخ به تمام نيازهاي روحي‌اش كافي نبود. او در جستجوي چيزي بود، فراتر از چهارچوب‌های فرهنگی خانواده‌ مورمون و مرفهي از كاليفرنيا. اما اتفاق جادويي زندگي او در تهران رخ داد: بي‌حوصله در هتلش پيچ راديو را باز كرد و ناگهان صدای تار را از رادیو شنید؛ شوری او را فرا گرفت که هرگز در کلوب‌های موسيقي جازِ لس‌آنجلس نچشیده بود. این حادثه کوچک نقطۀ آغاز پیوندی ناگسستنی با موسیقی و فرهنگ ایرانی شد و یکی از اولین نمونه‌های تلفیق جاز و موسیقی آسیایی را به بار آورد.

*  *  *

«برای من فرقی نمی‌کند؛ چه در قهوه‌خانه‌ای در هرات ساز دست گیرم، یا در گروه‌نوازی‌‌های افغان‌ها بنوازم یا در دکانی در ترکیه؛ هیچ‌کدام فرقی با اجراهایم در كلوب «رد فدر» یا «پرپل آنییِن» در لس‌آنجلسِ دهۀ پنجاه ندارند. سیستم موسیقیایی یکی‌ست. روح موسیقی، نت‌ها و گاه الگوهای ملودیک و جمله‌بندی‌ها یکی هستند.» -- لويد ميلر

لوید میلر، متولد 1938 در گلندیلِ کالیفرنیا، با درس‌گرفتن از پدرش که که نوازندۀ حرفه‌ای کلارینت بود، نواختن چندین ساز را در اسلوب نیواورلئان آموخت. سبکش متأثر از جورج لوییس، جانی دادز و جیمی جیوفری بود و اولین صفحۀ 78 دور خود را در 1950 ضبط کرد. کورنت، آکاردئون، بانجو، ترومبون، کلارینت، باس و ساکسفون از جمله سازهایی بودند که در نواختنشان مهارت داشت. پدر او که استاد دانشگاه کالیفرنیای جنوبی بود برای تاسیس مدرسه بازرگانیِ دانشگاه تهران به ایران دعوت شد. بعد از ورودشان به ایران در 1957 لوید به مدت یک سال در ایران ماند و نواختن چندین ساز ایرانی را آموخت. اما از آنجا که هرگز آرام و قرار نداشت روانه آلمان شد و در فرانکفورت در «دومیسیل دو جز» همراه با پیتر ترانک و آلبرت منگلزدورف به اجراي موسيقي پرداخت. لويد به خاطر مي‌آورد: «در دوره‌ای در 1958 پیانیست خانگی «جز کلر» در ماینتسِ آلمان، بودم. یک شب دان اِلیس، اِدی هریس و یک ترومپت‌نواز ترک به نام مافی فلای همراه با اعضای دیگرِ دستۀ جازِ ارتش آمریکا به آنجا آمدند. آن شب بعد از اجرا، ادی و دان بعضی از ساخته‌هایم که ملهم از شرق بود را خوانندند و دان گفت که این مسیر را در موسیقی‌اش ادامه خواهد داد.» و چنين هم شد.

لوید بعد از آلمان به سوییس و سپس استکهلم رفت. در 1960 در کنار برجسته‌ترین موزیسین‌های جاز سوئد، از جمله برنت روزنگرن، لارس فارنلوف، لنارت جنسن، کار کرد. مقصد بعدی پاریس بود. در «کامیلیون» با گروه جف گیلسُن می‌نواخت و گه‌گاه نیز سری به کافه بلونت می‌زد. در آنجا بود که قطعاتی را نیز به جاي باد پاول با نوازنده طبل کنی کلارک اجرا می‌کرد. لوید، نشست‌های ضبط شده و نشدۀ متعددی در اروپا داشت؛ از جمله با ژاک پلزر، (ساکسُفونیست فراموش‌شده‌ای که کارهای درخشانی با چت بیکر ضبط کرده است) و تونی اسکات، ماجراجوی دیگری از جنس لويد.

او که معتقد به کلیسای مورمون بود در بازگشت به آمریکا وارد دانشگاه برگهم یانگ شد و در همان سال اول ایدۀ تلفیق جاز و موسیقی شرقی را مطرح کرد. عده‌ای از موزیسین‌های این دانشگاه تحت نظارت لوید ترکیب جسورانه‌ای از سازهای ایرانی و موسيقي «کول جَز» آفریدند که لوید آن را «جاز شرقی» نامید؛ عنوانی که بعدها نام اولین صفحه‌اش شد.

«کوارتت جاز شرقی» در فستیوال جازي كه مخصوص گروه‌هاي دانشگاهي كرانۀ غربي آمريكا بود شبیه هیچ‌کدام از گروه‌های دیگر شرکت‌کننده نبود و جایزه اول را برد. آلبوم گروه نیز به یکی از تاثیرگذارترین نمونه‌های تلفیق موسیقی شرق و غرب بدل شد.

قطعه گل گندم در اجرايي در تلويزيون ايالت يوتا، 1965

آلبوم «جاز شرقی» (که ترکیبی از نواخته‌های «کوارتت جاز شرقی» یا «کوارتت پرس کیز» و تریوی میلر بود) با قطعه‌ تکان‌دهنده‌ای آغاز می‌شد به نام «گل گندم». فرانسیس گودینگ در مورد این قطعه می‌نویسد: «صدای سحرانگیز سنتور میلر همراه با تک‌نوازی‌های ماهرانه کیز و سوییگ به‌جایِ باس و درامز، به ترتیب توسط دان وست و دیک بیسون، ترکیبی ایجاد کرده است که شنونده را براي هميشه با خود می‌برد.»

در 1969 (1348) از مرکز شرق‌شناسیِ دانشگاه یوتا یک بورس تحقیقاتی به لويد تعلق گرفت. این‌بار با تصویر روشنی از آنچه در پی‌اش بود به ایران آمد و در طول هفت سال آتی، ضمن این‌که اقامتگاه اصلی‌اش تهران بود، خاورمیانه را از افغانستان و پاکستان تا لبنان و ترکیه زیر پا گذاشت. لوید زیر نظر دکتر داریوش صفوت و استاد محمود کریمی در موسیقی کلاسیک و فولکلور ایرانی مهارت پیدا کرد و عنوان پایان‌نامه دکترایش شد «موسیقی و تصنیف در ایران: هنر آواز». در طول این هفت سال در جشنواره‌های مختلف موسیقی سنتی شرکت کرد، از مکان‌های مقدس دیدن کرد، در مراسم صوفیان حاضر شد و زندگی اقوام مختلف این خطۀ را از نزدیک لمس کرد.

برای انتشارات انگلیسی زبان در تهران و بیروت مقالات زیادی نوشت. در دهه هفتاد میلادی (دهه پنجاه شمسی) با نام مستعار کوروش علی خان برنامه‌ای هفتگی در تلویزیون ملی ایران را می گرداند با موضوع موسیقی جاز و موسیقی قومی ایران. اين برنامه، «کوروش علی خان و دوستان»، هفت سال پیاپی ادامه یافت و او را به چهره‌ای شناخته شده در ایران بدل کرد. همچنین مجموعه‌ای تلویزیونی درباره تاریخ جاز و برنامه‌ای به زبان انگلیسی درباره فرهنگ و هنر ایران را تهیه و کارگردانی کرد.

در 1977 (1356) به یوتا بازگشت وتدریس، که از سال‌های میانی دهۀ 1960 آغاز کرده بود، را پی‌گرفت. به گفته گودینگ، در دهۀ هفتاد میلادی و در اوج دوران توجه به موسیقی و ادیان شرقی، میلر سال‌ها پيش‌تر از ديگران اين تجربه‌ها را پشت سر گذاشته بود. از آن زمان تاکنون زندگی او را می‌توان در یک چیز خلاصه کرد: حفظ ميراث جاز سنتی و موسیقی شرقی. از کارهای اخیر او می‌توان به همکاری‌اش با کریس ویلکینز، آهنگساز اركستر سمفونیك یوتا، در کار بر روی ارانژمان‌های بانک جانسُن، جو کینگ آليور و بیکس بیدربک برای اجرا توسط اركستر سمفونیك یوتا اشاره کرد.

نويسنده‌اي مي‌گويد لوید میلر هرگز آن‌طور که باید مورد تحسین قرار نگرفت. «وی کسی بود که در خارج از محدودۀ میِن‌استریم کار کرد و تأثیرش از شرق او را از دیگر موسیقی‌دانان جاز مودال متفاوت می‌کند. او زندگی‌اش را وقف هنرش کرده بود و شاید همین موضوع او را تا حدی از نظرها دور کرد.» فرانسیس گودینگ زندگي و آثار او را «طنین قوی نُتي در کلیدی عجیب و غریب» می‌خواند. خود میلر این کلید را نشات گرفته از ایران می‌داند. به عقیده او ریشه بلوز، سه‌گاه در دستگاه موسیقی ایرانی‌ست؛ میراثی که توسط اعراب (مثل خیلی چیزهای دیگر از جمله اذان) از ایران گرفته شد و به آفریقای شمالی و نیواورلئان راه پیدا کرد. به این ترتیب او جاز را برآمده از موسیقی سنتی ایران می‌داند.

وی در بخشی از نامه‌اش به من زیبایی «صوفیانه» آلبوم Kind of Blue، مایلز دیویس را گوشزد می‌کند و می‌نویسد که زیبایی موسیقی استن گتز، بیل اِونز یا ديو بروبک برای او فرقی با زیبایی اذان ندارد. «همه آن‌ها وجود پروردگار را تصدیق و نیکی را تصویر می‌کنند.»

لويد با استاد آوازش، پريسا

لوید از موسیقی پاپ بیزار است و زمانی‌که چند سال پیش تهیه‌کننده‌ای در مورد استفاده از قطعۀ «گل گندم» برای یک آلبوم گلچين موسیقی سایکدلیک اجازه خواسته بود، لويد بي‌درنگ درخواست تهيه كننده را با نوشتم اين نامه رد کرد:

«به هیچ ترتیب نمی‌توانم به چیزی که در تمام زندگی‌ام با آن جنگیده‌ام نزدیک شوم؛ مثل یک آفریقایی-آمریکایی که هرگز با کوکلاکس‌کلان کنار نخواهد آمد. وقتی درق و دورق‌های الکترونیک، کسی را به یک زامبی بدل کرد دیگر امیدی به بازگشتنش به سویینگ جاز دهۀ پنجاه نیست. شاید بعد از جنگ جهانیِ سوم وقتی یک سوم جمعیت جهان نابود شد، این درق و دورق‌ها هم برای همیشه پایان یابد.»

خاطرات لويد به زبان فارسي شيرينش 

لوید با تأثیر از کلیت ایرانی/ اسلامیِ موسیقی در «موسیقی و تصنیف در ایران» می‌نویسد: «آوای حقیقی، درونی‌ست درحالی‌که موسیقی مطربی، عنصری خارجی‌ست». وی که بیش از چهل سال است که گیاه‌خواری را پیشه کرده، از رویای خود با ما می‌گوید: «شاید روزی رسد که جوانان عصاره گندم نوشند و پروردگار را شاکر شوند و به خزعبلات عرضه شده تن ندهند و زیبایی خلسه‌آور موسیقی‌ای مانند راوی شانکار یا موسیقی سنتی ژاپن را ارج نهند و شاید، فقط شاید، در این میان، به صفحه‌ کهنه‌ای از لوید میلر بربخورند و بگویند که این ابله خيلي مدت‌ها پيش از همه، این راه را پیموده است.»

Lloyd Miller, A Sufi of Jazz

Lloyd Miller with Oud (known in Farsi as Barbat)

In 1957, a family of wealthy Americans, after leaving Los Angeles for Japan, and traveling through Far East countries, finally landed in Tehran. The father was an educated man, and a professional musician, and one of his main reasons for bringing his nineteen year-old son to this trip was to keep away this young jazz aficionado from problems with police which apparently were caused by "drug habits" of his fellow musicians. This young cat, named Lloyd, was searching for something beyond the values and frames of mind of his upper class family of southern California. He was looking for a new musical language that he had found partially in traditional jazz, and also the modern movement known as Bop, but still those were not adequate responses to his spiritual quest.

When Lloyd out of curiosity, in his hotel room in Tehran, turned the radio on and heard someone playing a Tar (a skin-covered Persian instrument that is a combination of a guitar and lute), he understood that he has find what he was looking for; an indescribable pleasure that he hadn't experienced in the jazz clubs of L.A.

This small incident was the beginning of his life-long association with Persian music and Persian culture that led him to one of the first fusions of jazz with Middle Eastern music.

From California to Tehran

"It is all the same musical system. For me to pick up an instrument in a teahouse in Herat, or play in an Indo-Afghan jam session in Kabul, or jam in a music shop on the Black Sea in Turkey, was almost the same as jamming in the Red Feather or Purple Onion during the 1950s, back in Los Angeles. The same spirit, the same feeling. the same notes and some of the same melodic patterns and repetitive and mirroring phrases." -- Lloyd Miller

Born in 1938, Glendale, California, Lloyd started to learn various instruments and immersing himself in New Orleans jazz, through teachings of his father, who was a professional clarinet player. Miller was imitating the style of George Lewis, Johnny Dodds and Jimmy Giuffre and cut his first Dixieland jazz 78 rpm record in 1950. He learned to play various instruments, including cornet, trombone, accordion, banjo, clarinet, bass and saxophones.

In 1957 his father, a professor at the University of Southern California, was invited to Iran, in order to oversee the creation of a school of  business at the University of Tehran.

After the trip to Iran and the mentioned "incident", he stayed in that country for a year and that helped him to learn a few Persian instruments. His restless soul forced him to leave Iran for Germany, where he performed at Domicile du Jazz in Frankfurt with Peter Trunk and Albert Mangelsdorf. "One night at the jazz keller in Mainz (Germany) in 1958 where I was the house pianist," remembers Lloyd, "Don Ellis and Eddie Harris with a Turkish trumpet man called Maffy Falay dropped in with other members of the US army Jazz Three band. After the jam, Don and Eddie read through some of my Eastern inspired charts and Don affirmed that he would continue along that line in his jazz career."

After Germany, Lloyd went to Switzerland and then Stockholm where in 1960 he worked with Sweden’s top jazz musicians, including Bernt Rosengren, Lars Färnlöf, and Lennart Jansson. The next stop was Paris, where he played at the Camillion with Jef Gilson band and occasionally visiting Blue Note cafe, where Miller would be asked by jazz legend Bud Powell to sit in a set or two with drummer Kenny Clark.

Lloyd had many other recorded or unrecorded sessions in Europe, among them playing along with sadly forgotten saxophone player Jaques Pelzer (who has some very fine recordings with Chet Baker), and later on, with an adventurous musician like himself, Mr Tony Scott.

Being a Mormon, on his way back to US, Lloyd entered the Brigham Young University. In his first year, for participating in a jazz contest, Lloyd gave the idea of fusing jazz with Eastern music to his fellow musicians in the university. Under Lloyd's supervision they made a harmonically daring blend of Persian  instruments with a cool-jazz oriented sound, and Lloyd, always a visionary, called that Oriental Jazz. The name later appeared as the title of his first LP. 

Unlike anything else presented at the jazz festival, the Oriental Jazz Quartet (Lloyd and Preston Kies on piano) took the first prize, and their recording turned out to be one of the most impressive takes on West-meets-East concepts in music. 

Oriental Jazz LP (a combination of the Oriental Jazz Quartet, or the Press Keys Quartet, and Miller's own trio) opens with haunting piece called Gol-e Gandom, which in Farsi means "flower of the wheat." Francis Gooding writes about this particular recording: "with its mesmeric combination of Miller's shimmering santur [a Persian instrument], Kies's deftly driving piano solo and the rock-solid responsive swing of the bass and drums, by Don West and Dick Beeson respectively, is an unforgettable piece of music that sweeps the listener along in its wake."

Gol-e Gandom broadcast by KBYU, 1965, with Preston Keys on piano

Managers thought that Lloyd's "bizarre" sound would be something provocative for the taste of new hippies, and their interest in the Eastern music, so in 1969 they invited Lloyd to play at now legendary Woodstock music festival. It wasn't Lloyd's taghdir [destiny]. Due to the weather conditions and the impossiblity of flying down there he missed the chance of playing his Oriental Jazz at the Woodstock, though he was paid a $ 150 check in spite of cancellation! Joni Mitchell couldn't get to the festival area, too, but she was clever enough to go back to her apartment in New York City and write down the Woodstock song which became the anthem of the festival. Lloyd, following the teachings of Daravish, went to a totally different direction, and headed for Iran again.

In 1969, Lloyd was awarded a Fulbright scholarship through the University of Utah Middle East Center to do a research on Persian and related music in the Middle East. So with a clear plan in mind he returned to Iran, and during the ensuing 7 years, Miller traveled throughout the Middle East from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Lebanon and Turkey spending most of his time in Tehran. Lloyd mastered Persian music as well as Iranian folk music genres under the supervision of masters Dr. Daryush Safvat and Mahmoud Karimi. Later, as his doctoral thesis, Lloyd wrote a book on Persian music, called Music and Song in Persia: The Art of Avaz. During that seven-year period, Lloyd performed at traditional music festivals, visited sacred shrines, attended wild Sufi ceremonies, and met many people from different ethnic groups in one of the world's most multicultural countries.

Lloyd with then Queen of Iran (left), Farah.

In Iran, Miller became a key art writer for the English publications in Tehran and Beirut. He was even lucky to be given the chance to run his own TV show at Iranian National TV. In the 1970s Lloyd became a well-known TV personality under the Persian pseudonym Kourosh Ali Khan, hosting his own prime-time weekly jazz and ethnic music show entitled Kourosh Ali Khan and friends. Incredibly, his show ran for seven years. He also produced and directed a weekly documentary series on history of jazz, as well as a special program in English focusing on Persian arts and culture. 

Lloyd in Tehran, playing Autumn Leaves with bassist Roger Hererra in 1975. The clip continues with a 2003 take on the same tune, in Utah.

In 1977 Miller returned to Utah. Gooding points that during the 1970s, a decade which saw sustained Western interest in the music and religions of the East, Miller was not only ahead of that particular curve, but had left it behind entirely. Lloyd resumed his teachings that had been started since mid 1960s. Soon he was invited to countless events to perform Eastern music or jazz of various styles. Lloyd Miller's life, since then, is been dedicated to keeping the flame of traditional jazz burning, as well as introducing the music of the East. Recently he has helped Utah Symphony conductor Chris Wilkins for transcription and reconstruction arrangements of Bunk Johnson, Joe King Oliver and Bix Beidebecke to be played by Utah Symphony. Lloyd's many guest appearances and collaborations with international artists is presented in a video on Youtube. 

 Spiritual Jazz

Mondomix website describes Lloyd Miller as a musician that was "never given the acclaim he deserved." Someone "working outside the mainstream. His complete immersion in the music of the East set him apart from other modal jazz voyagers, and it is perhaps this dedication to his art that has left Miller in the shadows." Music critic Francis Gooding calls him "an intense echo in an unfamiliar key." Lloyd himself, explains this key, as something rooted in Iran. He believes that blues is based on the Persian Segah modal scale in the section opposite at the end of the mode. He traces back this musical heritage to the time when the Arabs took it (and every other idea of any value including the Azan) from Persia and called is Sikah and it ended up in North Africa then New Orleans and beyond. So in his view, and his teachings, jazz is an outgrowth of traditional old Persian music. 

Dr Lloyd Miller is capable of playing nearly 100 instruments, especially jazz instruments and Eastern instruments. Here, in a montage of various footage from 1965 to 2000s, he plays 38 different instruments!

He recently wrote to me about "spiritual Sufi beauty of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue", and that music of "Stan Getz, Bill Evans or Brubeck makes a person feel God's goodness and confirms the existence of God just like hearing the Azan does. For me it is all the same beauty," he said.

Lloyd despises pop music and when some years ago a producer asked him if he can use Gol-e-Gandom in a compilation CD of weird psychedelic fusion music, he simply refused:

"I just can't be anywhere near the thing I am fighting full-time, like an African-American that won't be affiliated in any way with the Ku Klux Klan. Once someone has become a zombie for the 8/8 inhuman electronic thumping, there is no way they will totally return to the swingin' 6/8 jazz groove of the 50s or the celestial sound of the coming post-apocalyptic Millennium. Maybe after World War III when 1/3 of the world's population has been grimly destroyed, then hopefully the ugly thumping will be stopped forever."

Lloyd, culturally influenced by Islamic/Iranian concepts of music, writes in Music and Song in Persia that the "Correct performance is 'interior', whereas as commercialized (Motrebi) performance is 'exterior'." A strict vegetarian for over 40 years, Lloyd shares this beautiful dream with us: " [someday when younger people] drink wheat grass, and praise the Lord and [are] not a part of corporate entities that are quick to sell them junk. And they'd gravitate toward beautiful dreamy music like Ravi Shankar and Japanese cultural music, and maybe, just maybe, they’d discover an old LP from Lloyd Miller, and say that this idiot was trying to do it a very long time ago and he was ahead of the curve."

I'll keep writing about Lloyd Miller, his spiritual/oriental jazz, and his contribution to the music of 20th and 21th century in upcoming weeks. Also stay tuned for a radio programme, dedicated to Lloyd's music on Saturday, 11 February 2012. More details will be posted here.

A documentary film about Lloyd Miller's life and music is under preparation, but like any other culture-related projects in recent years, it NEEDS FUNDING. Anyone with any interest in this project who can help me to make it possible, please send an email to esatchmo(at)yahoo(dot)com.

Lloyd Miller's website, including a wide range of materials, from a free to download autobiography, to audio samples and numerous video clips and photos can be accessed here.

Swinging Persia

Jazz in Iran? Yes, and no! Once upon a time, before the 1979 revolution, when oil's money was overflowing, a Queen and some of her advisers had the idea of making the country more sophisticated, more prestigious. Thus, among so many decisions they made, one was inviting the jazz acts to the country. Of course, long before this plan that long before Harry 'Sweets' Edison, Pearl Bailey and Louie Bellson appear in Tehran's biggest amphitheater by that invitation, Duke Ellington and his Orchestra showed up in Isfahan, a place so amazingly beautiful that inspired Duke and Billy Strayhorn to embed all that beauty in one of the most majestic alto solos in history of jazz, Isfahan, as played later by Johnny Hodges.

Dizzy Gillespie during the 1956 State Department jazz tour, at a reception with Princess Shams Pahlavi, elder sister of the Shah of Iran, and her husband Mehrdad Pahlbod (Later Minster of Culture and the Arts) at the capital of oil in Iran, Abadan. Also I've seen some very rare photos of Dizz with Shah's generals in a port in southwest of Iran, which a friend discovered in an antique shop in Florida.

Everybody was coming to Iran, from Frank Sinatra to Karlheinz Stockhausen! Money was flowing and even if Frank Sinatra's concert in Jamshidieh Stadium in Tehran was a flop, it didn't stop musicians from visiting lavish, old, and rich Persia. Falling in love with the country was so easy, as William Wyler's host in Iran told me, "he came for a week long festival, and ended up staying for a month on the shores of Caspian sea and eating best Caviar in the world." Magic carpet was ready to give a free ride to everyone whose name was big enough to give credit to the country that was longing for that.

What Frankie is doing with Shabaan the Brainless? Shabaan the Brainless was a notorious thug who had a direct role in American Coup d'état of 1953 that led to overthrow of Iranian first and last democratic government. According to the CIA's declassified documents and records, some of the most feared mobsters in Tehran were hired by the CIA to stage pro-Shah riots. In 2000, Madeleine Albright, ex-U.S. Secretary of State, confessed that intervention by the U.S. in the internal affairs of Iran was a setback for democratic government, but it was too late.

So Dizzy Gillespie and his big band was visiting oil cities, like a treasury minister, and Willis Conover's voice was in the air, as Hollywood films had their premiere in Tehran cinemas. Sundays, Jack Teagarden in a striped suite played good old jazz in national TV. The country was like a story from 1001 nights, a modern fairy land, where at days you had Peter Brook to perform in Shiraz, enjoying the best grapes in the world, and at nights John Cage was on stage, an artist whose musical ideas was even too much for the Western ears.

Karlheinz Stockhausen (front right) at the Shiraz Arts Festival, Iran, 2 September 1972. How many of these people understand what's happening, musically?

Aloys and Alfons Kontrarsky, 2.9.1972, Shiraz.

Among those who landed in Iran, there was a young American jazzman who had something else in mind.


...to be continued.

Part 2 here.