On the Persian Santur: A Jess Update and the Music of Ostad Manoocher Sadeghi, Baha'i

First, a Jess update. Regular readers of this blog know that Jess has been systematically investigating the Baha'i Faith and reporting on it on her blog Rambles, Reviews and Rants. Through the efforts of a woman who works where Jess does, arrangements had been made for Jess to meet with some local Baha'is, her first meeting with Baha'is other than her co-worker. Here is an excerpt from her "Update..." from yesterday:

I did go to meet the Baha'i woman last night. It turned out that the event I was going to was a youth group of sorts for teen aged Baha'is in a very nice home in Great Falls. They kids had a great party going on in the basement! It began with prayers, followed by dinner and by the time I was leaving the dance music had come on and things were getting lively. Almost everyone there (there was a German woman, an American woman and me) was Persian and had gorgeous dark eyes and hair. After the prayers two men played two different traditional Persian instruments that I cannot recall the names of. One instrument sat on a table and had strings and the man hit them with two mallets. It made an ethereal musical sound. The other man played a drum of some sort. It looked wooden and was shaped sort of like a spitoon (sorry, it did!). The music was fantastic. I wonder if there are CD's recorded of that style of music?

For many Persian music is synonymous with the sound of the santur. The santur (سَنتور) is a hammered dulcimer of Iran. It is a trapezoid-shaped box often made of walnut, with 72 strings. The name means one hundred strings in Persian. The special-shaped mallets (mezrab) are lightweight and are held between the index and middle fingers. A typical santur has two sets of bridges, providing a range of three octaves. The right-hand strings are made of brass, while the left-hand strings are made of steel.

According to Wikipedia one of the leading santur players in the world is Ostad Manoochehr Sadeghi, a Baha'i who performed at the Second World Baha'i Congress in New York City in 1992 and whose music can still be heard today. Samples of his music are at Santur.com, concert videos can be viewed, and copies of his most current CD ordered.