Anushirvan Rohani – Mullah Muhammad Jaan
Over the weekend Egon of Now-Again records held a pop-up record store at his Rappcats location in Highland Park. One of the more intriguing things that he brought out (and there were all kinds of goodies) was a box of 45s from Iran. I know next to nothing (only Googoosh, thanks to that Finders Keepers comp.) about the music of Pre-Revolution Iran. As difficult as it is for us to find Post-revolution music from Cuba, it’s twice as hard finding Pre-Revolution music from Iran. I also don’t speak or read Farsi, and so whatever I bought, I’d have very little idea of what I was getting. Finances restricted me to getting a couple of very dusty 45s, with this one being the better of the two.
I was however very lucky to get some information about the artist from fellow former KALX-er Pantea “Ponnie” Javidan and discovered that the artist was Pouran (often also spelled Pooran), who was singing on the A-side. Ponnie told me that the song, “Mullah Mohammad Jaan” was a love song, that roughly translates to “Dear Mullah Mohammad” and is a love song where the singer wants to him to take her to see the tulip flowers by the shrine. Pouran’s vocals are quite nice, but it was the instrumental on the B-side that I dug the most.
The organ has a ghostly kind of feel to it, a sound, when added to the percussion, that doesn’t sound like a whole lot of other places. Given that he seems to have been a major player in Iranian popular music of the time, it’s a safe bet that Anoushiravan Rohani is the organ player, but it’s very tough to tell. According to Ponnie, this 45 was part of a “Ahang-e Ruz/Song of the Day” series by Apelon Records, which were included in a magazine of the same name. I’m not sure how or when I’ll get another chance to dig on this music, but I hope it’s sooner as opposed to later.
