Female Announcer: >>From the Library of Congress is Washington, D.C. [Silence] [Applause] Theadocia Austen: >>Thank you. Welcome. I'm Theadocia Austen the public events coordinator for the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. And, on behalf of our entire staff I want to welcome you to this concert in the 2011 Homegrown Music of America Concert Series. The Homegrown series was designed to feature the very best of traditional music and dance from around the nation. The center works with dedicated and talented folk [sic] state folk arts coordinators all throughout the nation who help us identify the most exciting and representative artists from within their communities. And that allows us to bring those performers here, right to Washington, where we can record them-- record their performances and put them into the archives at the American Folklife Center and webcasts them for the web so that they are viewable by anyone who has a computer anywhere in the world or scholars who want to do research. >>We also work with the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage to feature these performers and they will have another performance today at 6:00 at the Millennium Stage. >>Today's performance is going to be recorded for the permanent collections so this would be a good time to turn off your cell phones if you have them on. Otherwise they will be recorded forever in our collections. >>As you may know, the Coolidge [Auditorium] has a very long history with blues and roots music. In 1938 Alan Lomax used it to capture piano performances and oral history with the great jazz performer Jelly Roll Morton. Those recordings were reissued on CD recently-- within the last couple of years-- and it won, those recordings won a Grammy. Many other legendary figures in folk and roots music have played here and because of that we have wonderful recordings in our archive. >>We'd like to thank Chris Kozlovsky and Chris Canner of National Sound for providing the sound for this concert and Solomon HaileSelassie from the Music Division for doing lights for us. >>So, today we have a special presentation from the state of Illinois. So please join me in welcoming Susan Dixon, she's the director of the Ethnic and Folk Arts Program of the Illinois Arts Council who will tell us a bit about today's performers. [Applause] Susan Dixon: >>Hello and thank you, Thea. I'm honored to be here today to present to you Kiu Haghighi from Evanston, Illinois, who will introduce you to one of the great loves of his life-- the Persian santour. Kiu's accomplice today playing the tombak and the daf is Tooraj Moshref-Zadeh who joins us from Atlanta. >>The Illinois Arts Council has a long history of recognizing the importance and value of our folk artists, cultural organizations and communities. We do this by providing support through our grants programs, by offering technical assistance and by producing some events. >>So now I'd like to take a shameless moment to promote the 2011 Midwest Folklife Festival which is being hosted this summer by the state of Wisconsin along with programming assistance from the Illinois Arts Council, the Indiana Arts Commission and the Minnesota Arts Board. And, I invite you to join us in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, over the August 20 and 21 weekend to sample some of the regions finest artists, performers and cultural practitioners. >>When Thea Austen-- I'm sorry. When Thea Austen contacted me about Illinois sending an artist to participate in this year's Homegrown America concert series Kiu Haghighi was the first artist I thought of. Kiu will introduce each piece and tell you-- and talk to you about that and also, hopefully, he'll be able to tell you a few stories. >>When Kiu arrived in Chicago in 1967 the Persian community was fairly well established. It had been established in the early 20th century and while it never quite achieved the size of Chicago's Polish or Mexican communities it has remained vibrant and very visible. So without further commentary, and on behalf of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, Illinois Arts Council Chairman Shirley Madigan, the Illinois Arts Council is pleased to bring to you Kiu Haghighi. [Applause] Kiu Haghighi: >>Greetings. One of the Persian classical music they have-- there are seven dastgahs which one of those dastgahs is called mahur. This is the tone-- this is the dastgahs I'm going to perform for you. You know, those dastgahs have a combination of some melodies which those melodies are standard and the musicians they learn that and then improvise around those. So, usually I am having with this precise-- you compose something with the precise rhythms, the basic composition, but the whole music is going to be improvisational music. So, usually dastgahs when they're started take about an hour or two hours but I am not going to go that far, you know [laughs]. So, let's see what happens. Thank you. [Music] [Applause] Kiu Haghighi: >>Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you very much, thank you. Kiu Haghighi: >>One of the concerts-- at the series of concerts in Japan years ago when I went there I met a famous musician I forgot his name now. And he was an older musician and he played the clarinet. He came and he joined me for a few of my concerts and I got very interested in Japanese music. And then I get-- I learned the scales of the Japanese music from him. Then when I came back home to the United States, I came back I was thinking because I do believe in the unity in the world and the world has to be the one really, sometimes who knows. That's why I thought, "Okay let me bring this music of the several countries together and show the unity with that with this instrument which is very limited." This instrument is not like a guitar or violin where you can go and have, you know, a variety of things on it. So now I did this one [composition]. But this is-- the basics of it I have in my mind but I do improvise around those. It's going to be-- you will hear the Japanese music then music from the south of Russia, Azerbaijan music; then Arabic, Arabic music and then I get back to the Persian and I end it with a Persian piece. [Music] [Applause] Kiu Haghighi: >>Thank you. Thank you. Kiu Haghighi: >>I don't know. I didn't, I wasn't-- somewhere on those brochures this instrument-- the history of the instrument goes to 699 B.C. and it's the original of the piano. One of the things I did with this instrument and the piano that I have, several CDs I made. I don't have it here now but several others I have for you. That's what happened I combined these two instruments together-- the piano and the santour. >>So now, we are going to do-- this one is called tombak. This is a percussion, Persian percussion [instrument]. The other one is called daf. We are going to just do some different rhythms for you and see what happens. [Music] [Applause] Kiu Haghighi: >>Thank you, thank you. Kiu Haghighi: >>I have two santours because when-- each of them is in a different scale tone. >>Another of the Persian dastgahs is called homayoun. You have to know you heard some quarter notes [they] are used on that instrument-- some parts of it. Especially the part [when] I played some Arabic music, Arabic music. In this dastgah, the dastgah homayoun, there's a quarter note there also. But I'm not going to play the whole dastgah, I'm going to play some melodies from that dastgah which is then-- those melodies composed around it. I'm going to play the different pieces with the different beats. It's going to be the-- I don't want to give you too many names-- so I say this one is chahargah, abu-ata and bayat-e-tork -- those are the three gushehs I'm going to work on. [Music] [Applause as music continues] [Music] [Applause] Kiu Haghighi: >>Thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. We have such a good audience. Kiu Haghighi: >>Oh boy, you make me happy. I have the-- if you have any questions I'm here and there are some CDs, if you want them, you are welcome. Thank you very much I appreciate that. Female Announcer: >>This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.