>> Announcer: From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> Mary Jane Deeb: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,
and thank you all for coming to what promises
to be a very exciting program.
I'm Mary Jane Deeb, Chief of the African - Middle East Division.
And our Division is responsible for 78 countries.
We're divided into three sections; the African section,
the Near East section, which is quite extensive and goes --
includes the Arab World, Central Asia, Turkey, Iran and we go
up to Afghanistan and we also include Georgia and Armenia.
And if you haven't had the chance yet there's a great exhibit
on Armenia -- on the Armenian book on this floor on the other side.
Now, our division, like our colleagues in the Hispanic Division
and the European Division, Asian Division, are responsible
for acquisition, reference, outreach, assisting Congress.
Those are umbrella terms that we use
for all the many activities that we have.
And today is what we would call an outreach activity.
In other words, we reach out to you all and we reach out to researchers
and those who have used our collections and those
who may want to use our collections.
We invite them to come and talk about specific topics
that involve one of our countries -- one of our regions --
because we want to make our collections better known
to the world.
And there is no better way to get those collections known
than to have speakers, to have researchers, to have scholars,
discuss the materials that they have collected,
the projects that they have created,
using resources in the region otherwise.
And we videotape those programs so that they are not only available
to people here -- to all of us sitting in this room --
but also to people around the world and to people in the region itself.
So we consider this is a very important part of the work
that we do here at the Library.
And it is our specialists, those who know the regions,
those who know the collectors, who identify the wonderful scholars
and researchers in the region and bring them here.
And today we have here Hirad Dinavari,
who is the Iranian World Specialist here in our division
and who has really done tremendous work
to help us better understand the region of the world.
He is the one who has put together this wonderful display
and there are displays of the materials here.
Material culture, primarily Kurdish costumes which were a gift to us.
And he also has become the fan of our wonderful speaker today,
Jane Lewisohn, who has so kindly agreed to come and talk
to us about a unique program.
The Golha Radio Programs that were created in Iran between 1956
and 1978 and she has done something absolutely stupendous with that.
So Hirad Dinavari will now introduce our speaker.
Hirad?   >> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mary Jane.
Thank you for everyone who has appeared and is watching the event.
Also, I'm glad to say that this is being recorded
and will be put online for everyone else to see.
Jane Lewisohn lived in Iran during the 70's for six years
and is a graduate of Pahlavi University, Shiraz, Iran.
She has been involved in research and promotion of various aspects
of Persian studies for the last three decades.
Since 2005, she has been directing the Golha Project under the auspices
of the British Library in London and the Music Department School
of Oriental African Studies, University of London.
She has archived and digitalized the whole archive
of the Golha Radio Programs broadcast
on Iranian radio from 1956 until 1979.
She is now working in collaboration with the IHF
to make this Golha Archive
and all the related research concerning the Golha Archive
available over the Internet.
I personally have got to know Dr. Lewisohn
and in my view she's a doctor for a number of years.
This is truly a magical project that she's taken on and I really hope
in the future we could collaborate with them at the Library, between us
and the University SOAS, School of Oriental African Studies.
Thank you very much.
Without taking any more time, she's going to take over from here.
Thank you.
>> Jane Lewisohn: First, I want to thank the Library and Mary Ann
and Hirad for their kindness in inviting me
and arranging this presentation.
I'll just start with the signature tune to the programs just
to give you sort of feel what they're like and then I'll go
into the description of the --   [ Plays Audio ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: And that's a line from the Golestan Sadi
and basically it's saying "Oh, what use are these trays of flowers.
Take a leaf from my flower garden.
These flowers are eternal and everlasting."
And that was the signature tune to the Golha Javidan,
which was the first Golha Program produced by Davud Pirnia in 1956.
And just give you a very brief sort of background as to how it came
about that these programs were made.
In the 19 -- as we begin this sort of modernization period of Iran,
Reza Shah had a feeling of about music and cinema and theater,
that these were all modernizing elements
and he was very favorable towards them.
And although he didn't specifically fund them,
he encouraged their expansion and development.
And then also you have -- then in 1941, Reza Shah abdicated
and his son, who was quite young at the time, in his 20's, took over.
And the allies came and they took over the country
for the whole of the Second World War.
And this was a very troubled time in Iran
because there was a lot of famine.
All the food that was produced was forcibly sold
to the forces and created famine.   And there was Marshal Law,
but at the same time, there was no censorship.
And so within the literary and artistic circles,
there was a flowering that happened during that time
that you didn't have under the Reza Shah period
where censorship was very strong, and then later
on in the Pahlavi period the censorship, again, becomes an issue.
And also, because of that, there was a huge amount of influences
from all different types of countries coming in from Arabic,
from Turkish, from Indian and whatever.
And the intellectuals of that time --
the traditional intellectuals of that time --
they found this to be a concern because they felt
that the traditional literature was under threat
and nobody was championing it.
And the traditional music they also felt to be under threat
and nobody was championing it.
And Davud Pirnia, who was the son of Moshir al-Dawla,
one of the most famous and most well-liked prime ministers in Iran,
very important in the Constitutional Revolution, and they lived right off
of what would have been comparable to Times Square in Tehran
at that time where all the theaters and the cabarets
and the music halls and cinemas were.
So he was very aware of this watering down,
you might say, of the traditions.
And there was a concern and he would have discussions
with his friends about this all the time.
And at the same time, Mr. Pirnia was a very kind of spiritual person
and he would gather with his friends -- now this is in [inaudible].
He would gather with his -- and this is a --
I'll go to this one first and then I'll go back to that one.
He would gather with his friends in the house of al-Soltan Khwajanuri,
who was an ex-ambassador and he was a Sufi of the [foreign name] order.
And in that house they would have gatherings
of all the famous musicians and literary people, some of the names
of whom you can see here.
And they would have -- they would play music and discuss literature
and mostly Sufi literature and everything.
And so when in 1956, Parviz Adl, who was head of the radio at the time,
invited Davud Pirnia to the radio to help at the radio.
He decided that they would want to try
to make a program reflecting their gatherings --
these Sufi gatherings of theirs -- so that everybody could participate
and have an experience similar to theirs.
And at this same time now, we're coming up to --
after the war you had the Azerbaijan Crisis where it was almost split --
Azerbaijan was almost split off
and that was a great shock for the country.
And then after that we come to the Mossadegh Crisis
which was also a great sort of shock for everybody
and a great disappointment to many people.
They were hoping to have a really full-fledged democracy,
which then they went back into the monarchy.
And at that time, after the Mossadegh Period,
the head of the radio was Mr. Adl and he had two assistants.
One was Mr. Moiniyan, who was in charge of the office
and then Mr. [foreign name], I think his name was,
and he was in charge of the programming.
At the same time, there was another radio called Radio [foreign name]
and they were playing a lot of music that had its origins in Arabic
and we would say street music type of things.
And they were getting a great audience and none
of the people were listening to the Tehran radio.
And so Mr. [foreign name] decided --
[foreign name] decided that he was going to invite those musicians
to the radio in Tehran to sing at the radio of Tehran.
Now, I'll just give you a clip here and hopefully it will come up.
I'm not exactly sure if it will.   And you can see what type of --
these were singers like [foreign name] and [foreign name]
and they sang -- sang [inaudible].   [ Plays Audio ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: So you can see the level, okay.
It's entertaining and it's funny now, even.
But this was a shock for those people and for the serious musicians
and they didn't want to be having --
have any association with these people.
And so they left the radio.
People like [foreign name] and [foreign name] and [foreign name]
and [foreign name] and all of these greats of Persian music.
They decided they weren't going to have anything
to do with this and they left.
And so this is about the same time that Mr. Pirnia comes on the scene.
And Mr. Pirnia is a man of great social and moral stature.
He helped an awful lot
in the Azerbaijan Crisis and resolving that.
And his family -- very famous.
His father wrote the history of -- first history of Iran --
very important and everything.
So he carried a lot of kudos with him.
And when he came to the radio and he started this program,
he was able to attract these people back because of his name
and his stature and they were willing to come and be part
of the radio again and work at the radio.
And at the same time, you have another important person who took
over the radio and became the minister, was Nosrat Allah Moiniyan.
Now when Nosrat Moiniyan came to the radio, it was basically a place
where everybody's aunt and uncle and cousin that they wanted
to give salary to, they put them on the name of the radio
and they never showed up.
They just got their salary and they didn't do anything.
And it was just total disorganization
and anybody could do whatever they wanted.
But when Mr. Moiniyan came, he changed everything.
And he made commissions for vetting the poetry,
commissions for vetting the music
and these were all the highest intellectuals of the day
and the best musicians of the day on these committees.
And then also, in addition to that, he insisted everybody
who was not a bona fide performer was kicked out
and their names were struck off the register.
And everybody had to sign a contract and had to agree
to being an employee and not just come whenever they wanted.
And so he put discipline to the place.
And this -- these two things --
Mr. Pirnia's prestige and Mr. Moiniyan's organizational genius,
made it a welcome place again
for the serious musicians and the good musicians.
And so the program just took off.   And the first program
that he produced was Golha Javidan, which was a fairly --
[ Background Discussion ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: So the first program
that he produced was the Golha Javidan,
which was a very serious program and it was centered mostly
around Sufi poets and Sufi literature.
And they would have some of the most famous literary critics of the time
like Ali Dashti, like [foreign name] and [foreign name]
and they would give commentaries on these poets and introduce them.
Now you have to remember in Iran at that time,
you had at least 85 percent illiteracy.
And most of these people could not read or write.
Although they loved poetry, but they couldn't read or write.
And so this program was on the medium of the radio.
It went out free on the airwaves and those people
who couldn't afford radios -- they would gather in coffeehouses
to listen to it and it quickly became almost like a cult program.
Everybody would stop what they were doing to listen to this program.
But it had such an effect on the literary
and music appreciation of the culture.
Many of the divans of the poets, which had not been published before,
all of a sudden came into demand and also people got used to listening
to quality music and they were introduced to who the musicians were
and what the dastgah's were and what the gushe's [phonetic] were
and everything.
And so it had not only the wonderful entertainment,
but also it was very instructional and educational
and it changed the way people listened
to Persian music and approached poetry.
He produced five different types of programs and you have the list here.
And Mr. Pirnia was the director of the programs for about 11 years.
And then about at the time when they were combining the radio
and television, and that was at the same time
that Mr. Moiniyan left the radio, Mr. Pirnia decided to retire.
Of course, his health was not good.
Also, he had a heart attack and he decided
that it wasn't the same place that it was
when he came so he decided to retire.
And he retired after 11 years.
And then it was taken up by Rahi Moayyeri, one of the major poets
of the time and a man named Mirnaqibi, and they put it together
up until 1972, when Hushang Ebtehaj took responsibility for the programs
and he produced a new type of program called Golha-ye taza.
And on those programs, at that time, also in Iran there was a movement
within Persian music which was called the Baghash Movement
or the Return Movement.
And people like [foreign name] and [foreign name]
and Mr. [foreign name] -- they were all going back
to the earlier traditions of the Gaja [phonetic] period
and Mr. Ebtehaj facilitated their --
this movement by putting them on the airwaves
and making people aware of it.
And then I'll just give you a few little examples of what the flavors
of what these programs were like with some audio clips here.
If I can find my pointer.
Okay. This is -- for those of you who are -- where's my pointer?
Oh, here it is.
I won't bother -- that's Persian so I won't bother with that one.
This is -- in the Golha Javidan you had some really unique programs
that, you know, remain in people's memory forever and one
of them was the performance of [foreign name]
of the song [foreign name].
And this became, you know, like a classic --
one of the major classics and this is --
[ Plays Audio ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: And then another clip.
This is a clip of [foreign name].
In the beginning, the orchestra was only about five or six people.
And most of the people there are in that picture there.
You have Sahba, Mortaza Mahjubi, [foreign name] Adib, [foreign name],
[foreign name] -- all of the --
there's only about five or six people in the audience.
Later on, they branched out when the Golha Rangarang came in,
which was the next program after the Golha Javidan.
They branched out and they had huge orchestras and people
like [foreign name] and [foreign name] began orchestrating the songs
and introducing elements of harmony.
And this is a -- I'll play that clip later when we get to the website.
And this is an example of the contracts.
They were all -- they all were under contract to the radio
and the music was all commissioned by the radio.
And it became so popular and the poetry became so popular they used
to -- and everybody was writing in and asking for copies of the poems.
So they began publishing in the radio journal --
in the center section of the radio journal -- copies of the program.
So here you have on one side it's the Golha Javidan
and on the other side you have the one of the Golha Rangarang Programs
because they couldn't possibly send out copies
to everybody who was asking for them.
And then here you have just a picture of the different levels
that everything had to go
through before it was okayed onto -- to be aired.
And so you have first the poet writing the poem
and then working it out with the musician.
And then, you know, it's looked over by the committee and it goes on.
And step by step, they're showing the people how much care is put
into what goes out onto the radio.   [ Pause ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: They also -- another thing that they did is a lot
of the compositions that -- like from people like Sheyda
and Darvish Khan, which were composers in the late 19th
and early 20th century, who a lot of their --
some of their work was recorded on phonograph,
but some of the work was never recorded.
And so they recorded these and, in some cases,
new poetry was added to them.
And this is an example of one where it's a song by [foreign name]
with a poem by Rahi Moayyeri.   [ Plays Audio ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: And so you can see in the music it's very orchestrated
and it's much different than the five-six man orchestra
that they had in the beginning.   And then -- oh, wait here.
This is a picture of [foreign name] conducting the orchestra
at the radio and you can see it's about 25-30 people
and it's become quite a big orchestra now.
And this is a copy of one of the boxes from the --
original boxes from one of the programs called Barg-e sabz,
which came in after the Golha Rangarang, and it was based solely
on Sufi poetry and it began with a poem by Attar.
Each one began with this poem.   [ Plays Audio]
>> Jane Lewisohn: So it says "Look, everywhere you look,
you will see the face of the beloved and this reflection
of the beloved is the reflection of the divine beloved."
And it begins with that and it always ended
with this poem by [foreign name].   [ Plays Audio]
>> Jane Lewisohn: So it says "Oh, how beautiful it is that anybody
who comes to your door is never turned away
and will always find an answer", basically.
It's a very loose translation.
And this is one of the most famous singers
in this group of programs was Zabihi.
And he sang at religious gatherings, mostly, and he always insisted
that he would never sing with any accompaniment.
He always had to make sure -- and in all the programs you see --
before he begins singing there's always somebody declaiming
and somebody declaiming afterwards.
But he sandwiched in between two declamations,
so he doesn't have any contact with music whatsoever
because it would have really --
his business was singing at religious gatherings
so that wouldn't have been very good to have him associated with music.
[ Plays Audio ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: But you can see it's a very serious and somber tone.
And, basically, for those of you who don't know Persian,
he was just doing the introduction there and the chacha [phonetic].
We didn't get to any words yet.
And then we have the Golha Sahrai, which were folk tunes
that were gathered from around the country and Mr. Khaleqi
and Mr. Marufi and some others, but mostly those two,
orchestrated them for the radio.
And one of the most famous, of course,
people from that era, [foreign name].
She began her career at nine years old singing on the radio
and now she's touring all the world.   She's one of my favorite singers.
And I'll just give you --   [ Plays Audio ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: And that's a singer by the name of [foreign name]
and his real name is Dr. [foreign name] and he was doctor from Shiraz
who loved Persian music and loved folk music
and he had his own collection.
And this was one of the geniuses of Mr. Pirnia.
And so he had his collection of music and he sent it
to Mr. Pirnia just like -- he didn't want to be a singer; he just sent it
to Mr. Pirnia saying these is some folk songs, maybe they'll be helpful
to you in your program, etcetera.   Maybe you could use them.
And he recorded some of them.
And so Mr. Pirnia liked it so much he just put it right on the radio.
And so you had this medical doctor, all of a sudden he turns
on the radio and there he is singing, which is quite a surprise.
And so a lot of the folksongs from the Shiraz area came
from Dr. [foreign name] who recorded them and then some
of them were then -- but Dr. [foreign name] himself only appears
on about four or five of these programs.
And then this is another program
that Mr. Pirnia invented was the [foreign name].
And there were 465 programs of the [foreign name]
and these were short programs around 15 minutes.
And in each one a poet was introduced with a short introduction
and then their poems were declaimed or sung.
And one of the very interesting things that you see
in this collection is that Mr. Pirnia took great pains
to introduce the female poets from the [foreign name] Period
down to the Pahlavi Period.
He -- introductions of these poets, the poems were declaimed
and sometimes sung, which was quite unique at that time because,
you know, in the literary circles,
it was a pretty male-dominated field.
And so, you know, he made a point of doing this.
And let me see what else we have here.
This is a copy of the actual divan that Mr. Pirnia used in many
of the poems for [foreign name] and he would select a few lines
and then he usually wouldn't do the whole [foreign word].
Which is different from what Mr. Ebtehaj did
in Mr. Ebtahaj's Golha-ye taza,
usually the whole program is devoted to almost one author.
But in Mr. Pirnia's programs, you had a lot of mix and match
and it was more mix and match on a thematic basis
where -- and so in any case.   That is that.
And then most of the major figures in Persian music
of the 20th century got their start on the Golha --
became famous in the Golha.
You know figures like [foreign name] and [foreign name].
Like [foreign name].   Like [foreign name].
Like [foreign].
I mean, these all became household names
and they all started out on the Golha.
[Foreign names] -- it was the Golha that rally made these into --
this is [foreign name] and [foreign name], and, of course,
[foreign name], the most famous voice on the Golha.
She was the most famous reciter of all the Golha programs.
And so -- and then they only had one public concert which was in benefit
of the earthquake victims of Lar and Mr. Pirnia even made all
of the performers pay the entrance fee because he wanted to raise
as much money as possible for the victims.
And this is a copy of the program and this is a list of the poets
so you can see the range of poets that he put into the programs
from the [foreign name] Period through the Pahlavi Period.
There are 560 poets in the collection.
The poems are declaimed and sung and it's a huge rich encyclopedia
of poets from that period.
And I've just selected some of the more famous ones
in the various different periods so you can see the types
of -- the range that he has.   And sometimes you'll find a poet --
only one poem he ever wrote in his life and Mr. Pirnia found it.
And also the other thing is among these poets he always picked the
most beautiful lines.
You know, the poet may have only wrote one good poem
and the rest were duds, but he would find that one
and he would use that one.
And so that's -- and then, of course, these programs then became
so popular that they were put on 45's and on cassettes
and they were selling like hotcakes.
And then you come here -- this is a picture of Mr. Pirnia in his office
in his father's house in Lalezar, in [foreign name], Lalezar.
And this is just a clip of his voice expressing his gratitude,
saying how much it meant to him working on the Golha and being able
to devote his time to Persian music and literature
and thanking some of the musicians.
So I'll just play that for the [inaudible].
[ Plays Audio ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: And the other thing is that for Mr. Pirnia,
the Golha programs were a labor of love.
He never took a salary
and he volunteered his time the whole time he was working
on the Golha.   Now I just want to show you --
give you a brief overview of what the Golha project has done as far
as making this available as a research tool for the academic
and lay community of Persian --
lovers of Persian music and Persian poetry.
[ Background Discussion ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: So this is the front page of the website and,
of course, here we have a small -- a short --
everything on the website is both in Persian and in English.
So you just click over here and it will give you the Persian version
if the Internet is fast enough.   It will come.
So you have everything that's on there is in Persian and in English.
And I'll go back to English, it's easier.
The letters are bigger.   [ Pause ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: And then we have the acknowledgments of the people
who helped out on the program.   Again, Persion-English.
And then translation system, bibliography --
we have the bibliography of all the divans.
One of the things that we've done is we've checked all the poems
with the original divans; checked the allocations to make sure
that the allocations are correct because in the 1950's and 60's many
of these poems -- poets were not published yet and they were working
from [foreign name] personal collections or poems
that people sent into the radio.   So we checked them all.
And then we have here some endorsements by various scholars
and this is one by [foreign name] Head of the Music Department
on his opinion of the site and it's contribution to Persian music.
And you can -- yeah, there's five or six of them; [foreign names]
and everything so you can just, at one's leisure, go through
and see what the experts think.   And then what we have here --
what we've done is we've made three levels of search that you can --
ways that you can -- three levels that you can search the programs.
And the first level you can choose the name of the program
that you want and then you can just type in the number of the program
that you're looking for and you click search.
And here you have the names of all the people who were involved
in the program, whether they were singers or writers or whatever.
And when you click on any one of them,
that section that they're performance is in changes color
and you can click on it -- if you have patience,
the Internet will come up and it will begin to play
in a few seconds, hopefully.   Internet seems to be extremely slow.
Maybe you'll have to take my word for it.
In any case, hopefully it will start playing in a minute.
In the meantime, I'll show you the other features.
These are the transcripts which are in Persian.
We didn't obviously do the transcripts in English,
it wouldn't have made much sense.
So while you're listening to the poetry being declaimed
or your listening to the poetry being sung,
then you can read it here.
So for students, particularly heritage students,
who may have grown up in families where Persian was spoken
but their reading comprehension and writing comprehension is maybe not
that great, they can -- this is a great way
to improve their reading comprehension.
And as you can see, we have identified all of the poems
and also the poetic genre of each poem.
So you can read those as you're listening.
And for some reason the Internet doesn't want to play the sound
but we'll just have to -- and then we have all the musical notes
for the [foreign name] and those ones that we could find that were
in printed versions of things, we scanned and put up.
And those ones that we can't we are writing them.
And we have about 700 [foreign name] in the Golha collection
and there are about 125 that we found from old journals
to modern published stuff.
And we were able to find in printed editions which we have scanned
and put in and the others are being written --
half of them have been written so far.
Okay. And then we have added this feature here
which is you can create your own collection within --
while you're working on this.
So like, for instance, if you were working on a collaboration
with somebody and, you know, another composer or something like that
and you find a particular performance here that you want
to send to your friend and collaborate on,
you can make your own collection here --
and hopefully, the link works.   Oh, it didn't come in.
Oh well. For some reason this isn't showing up.
In any case, if it was working you would come on to this list
and then you can e-mail this list to your colleagues or your friends.
And also that list, you can just play in iTunes, just go down,
down and it will play each one, like that.
So you can make your own favorite collection there.
And then here we have what we call the individual search
or search [foreign word] and you can search the programs
by anyone of these rubrics.
So you have the name, the singer of the avas,
the singer of the [foreign word], the name of the song,
the composer of the song, the lyricist, the poet of the poem sung,
the poet whose poems are declaimed, and then here you can search
by the first line of the poem sung
or the first line of the [foreign word].
And you can choose whether it's -- you only need one word.
So if you have one word from the poem, you can find it.
So here, if we say starts with and then we'll type a word
in here [inaudible] and then, God willing,
the speed of the Internet will help us.
And it should now say select, any second now.
Okay, now.
And then you select which one you want from the list.
And, of course, if you're in the Persian mode then it would be
in Persian and you select it in Persian.
But we're working in English mode here.
And then you click   [ Pause ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: Anywhere where that poem has been sung in avaz,
in the program, will come up and you can click on it and play it.
But the Internet seems to be --
this is the Library of Congress in the most advanced country
in the world, so it's a bit slow.
If we were Korea, it probably would be faster.
But in any case, we will figure out -- okay, here we go.
It's coming now.   Okay, so here it is and we can --
that gives you the further description.
And you click here for the --
I think that the speed of the Internet, maybe, is not fast enough
for these audio things to play.
But in any case, you would click on it
and then you could play the thing that you found.
And then we have what we call advanced search.
And in the advanced search section you can select several different
aspects of a program and then those programs
that contain those various aspects, they will come up in a list.
So let's say we're looking for gushe
or the melodic segment of [foreign name].
We want to see something about the melodic segment of [foreign name].
And we want the singer -- well,
she didn't sing [foreign name] in [foreign name].
The singer will be [foreign names].
Then we want the poem to be [foreign name].
And then we click and eventually a list will come
up of all the instances where [foreign name] has sung
in the [foreign names] and if the internet was fast enough to play,
maybe it will be, God knows we'll try, you click here and the --
it would begin -- the recording would begin
at the first note of the [foreign name].
So if you are trying to compare the performance of [foreign name]
by [foreign name] and the performance of [foreign name]
by [foreign name], in a click you'll have it.
Sorry. In a click you would have it.
And I'm sorry that the speed of the Internet hasn't been good enough
to play these but you'll just have to take my word
for it, but that's what happens.
And also one of the other features that we have here is
that we've used a certain kind of application that instead
of like here when you click, it would begin at the first note.
So you wouldn't have to start at the beginning and then look
for what you're looking for and go find it whatever.
So it just begins right at the first line of the song, the first note
of the gushe and it plays on.
And what we're hoping is that this will encourage
and make easy research in Persian music and Persian literature
and hopefully Persian music
and Persian literature will take their place that they deserve
on the world stage because more people will write dissertations
about it and more people will do research on it
because it will be easier for them to do that research.
And we're hoping to expand the project to include the indexing
of the other genres of Persian music, whether it's solo music
or the folk music or the private recordings
that were made in people houses.
And since I've started this project, people from all
over the world have sent me their archives and, you know,
thousands of real tapes and gigabyte after gigabyte of recorded music.
And my house right now is like the Museum of Music of Iran.
And I'm hoping with the help of the library and other lovers
of Persian music culture, we will be able to make this available
in this academically and index fashion so it will be able
to be used by composers, by researchers, and also accessible
to just lovers of Persian music who can, you know,
have access to these things that is in an orderly fashion.
So thank you so much for listening
and if you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer.
[ Applause ]
>> Hirad Dinavari: Dr. Lewisohn, thank you very much.
That was wonderful.
If you have questions, please get up and ask.
I just want to say that this is being recorded
so your questions will be webcast later
and you're consenting to being filmed.
So when you do ask the question, if you could repeat it
since there's no mics out there.   >> Jane Lewisohn: Sure.
>> Hirad Dinavari: So for the recording.
>> Jane Lewisohn: Yes, please.
>> Thank you for this wonderful presentation.
Are these recordings now?   Can someone just [inadible]?
>> Jane Lewisohn: Not yet.
Not yet. We're still doing, you know, checking
and copy editing and stuff like that.
And we're hoping by the end of the summer that it will be --
oh, the other thing I didn't tell you that we're also --
is hopefully going to be incorporated in this --
we're planning to scan all of the journals to do with performance art
because right now a scholar, who is trying to write
about performance art in Iran, they have no access to these things.
And almost all the articles that you see written about people
like [foreign names], whatever, it's all -- even in Encyclopedia --
it's all taken from [foreign word] -- from people's interviews.
But all of these things were documented in the journals
that were written at the time.
And the scholars have no access to it.
So what we want to do is scan them and index them
and make them available online to the scholars
so that we can have a proper writing of the history
of 20th century performance art instead of just rumors.
Because if you interview somebody and they're going to say
"Of course", you know, "I was the first one and everybody came
after me and I was the best and they all didn't know what they were
talking about" and whatever.
But, you know, you need to use the texts.
You need to have the interviews that were published at the time
and the reviews that were published at the time about these people.
Sorry for the postscript.   [Inaudible question].
I hope to God it will always be free and hope we won't ever have
to charge for it and that's our aim.
And certainly, this phase will definitely be free
and hopefully we will be able to help lovers of Persian art
and culture with grants from institutions --
we'll able to keep it free.   Yes?
>> Hi. I was wondering if there are any contemporary programs
that [inaudible].   >> Jane Lewisohn: Well, he --
the question was were there any contemporary programs
that we would consider.   And the thing is that the material
that is really endangered is the stuff pre-1979.
Because this is a kind of job that a government should be doing
but they're not and they will never do it because if even they wanted
to do it they would have to censor it so strictly
that it would be meaningless.
And by 1979 and then onwards, technology changed.
It's not that -- they're not that endangered.
All the journals are printed on newsprint.
They're disintegrating -- they need to be saved.
And everything else is on magnetic tape, it's on celluloid.
These things have a shelf life.
And then also, you also have most of the artists from 1979 on,
they have their own archives
and then they have their own copyright issues.
Many of them have published things outside of Iran.
This is the problem, too.
Then you run into a huge spiderweb about, you know, copyright.
But this material, because it belonged to the radio --
Radio Iran -- and in Iran, after 30 years it's public domain,
and they never signed any of the copyright commissions
so we don't have those complications.
And also, this is endangered material.
The stuff from 1979 and it's the responsibility of the authorities
to do that, you know, in my opinion.   [ Pause ]
>> Jane Lewisohn: Yes?
>> How many recordings have you put together?
I mean it's quite significant.
>> Jane Lewisohn: Well, in the Golha Programs we have
about 1,500 programs and they range from 15 minutes
to some are as long as an hour.
But the majority of them are in the half hour period.
So there are about 1,500 programs.   It's about 1,000 hours of audio.
>> Who do you depend on to get all these programs?
>> Jane Lewisohn: How do I get them?
Well, the first phase was sponsored by the British Library.
And I made many trips to Iran and a lot of private collectors
and also private collectors outside of Iran in Germany, in France,
in Canada, in California.
And also, my way of doing it, I always did it in a trade
so I would give them whatever I had they didn't have
and then I would get whatever they had that I didn't have.
And we collected the collection that way.
But I also had the help of the Museum of Music in Tehran
which has one of the major collections there
from a man named [foreign name].
They have his collection and they have digitalized that
and then the [foreign name], which is another major collector in Iran
and that's at the House of Music and I had access to that.
And also the radio.
I had access to them and they helped me also and we did the same kind
of trade thing because the radio archive is not complete.
Because after the Revolution, during that period when music was outlawed
and people -- it had dropped off people's radar screen,
a lot of the people from the radio -- they would take a shopping list
and they would give it the tea server and so a lot
of things are missing for that reason.
And many people say "Oh, they burned everything."
They didn't because there was a protected archived plus a
public archive.
So there was like a picking place that they would use.
But then there was one that was protected archive
that nobody could use.   So they were missing some things.
When I exchanged with the radio, they had 17 programs
that I didn't have and I had 82 programs
that they didn't have, which I gave them.
So, you know, that's the way it was -- it was just a piecemealing.
And then the other things people have sent me.
You know, this one is from -- I have the thousand reel tapes that I have
from somebody who was a gentleman who lived in Shiraz and he --
his aim -- he was a guitar player --
his aim was to record all of Persian music.
And he was a [foreign name] and as it came close
to the Revolution he realized that, you know, things were going
to go pear shape for him.
And his daughters were studying in England so he came out of Iran
with this whole complete archive which he had in Manchester.
And then he passed away and his wife wanted to throw it out.
And so one of his friends saved it
and then his wife decided this is taking
up too much room, let's get rid of it.
And so he found me.
And I immediately drove up to Manchester and now it's
at my house waiting to be cataloged
and digitalized and put on the thing.
And then people from all over the world have sent me their archives.
Those other archives are mostly digital.
Some of them are also on reels, some of the them are
on tape -- on cassette tape.
But the majority of the things people have sent me, you know,
like whole hard drives -- that they're mostly digitalized.
>> How comprehensive [inaudible] for that period?
>> Jane Lewisohn: For that period, pretty comprehensive.
Pretty comprehensive.
But, of course, until we get the whole thing indexed,
those things that were radio programs, that's obvious because,
you know, there's 720 [inaudible] so we know.
And the same with the [foreign names] we know what the number is.
But, you know, other things we don't know how many there are
and so they all have to be listened to and cataloged
and then incorporated into the system.
But what we've done with this archive -- with this database --
is we've made it broad enough.
We've put in a lot of more categories than we would have needed
for the Golha so that we're thinking ahead
so that it would be expandable in the future.
>> Hirad Dinavari: One last question and this is the end
because we're running out of time.
As far as the female singers, did you get any help
from inside Iran after the Revolution?
Were they willing to give you stuff on [foreign name]
and all the female singers that they had now banned?
>> Jane Lewisohn: Well the radio, yes.
I mean, they don't seem to mind if it it's outside of Iran.
But [foreign name] -- all of the extent recordings
of [foreign name] have been anonymously published
in Iran in a box set.
And it's -- they do these wonderful things.
You know, they're not allowed to do it but they publish it.
It looks so professional, you know, in a box set with an index
and everything, but you can't find anywhere on there who did it.
And, you know, you have to go behind corners and rumors here and there
and then find out how to get it.
But, you know, Iran is a huge country of controversy
and anything is possible.
>> Hirad Dinavari: Thank you very much for coming.
We've run out of time.   And I can't thank Jane enough
for this is truly preserving Iranian culture and music and heritage.
So I couldn't thank her enough.
On behalf of the Library and as an Iranian,
I really can't thank you enough.   Really, truly, thank you.
Thanks for coming.
>> Announcer: This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.   Visit us at loc.gov.