Iran
Overview
"World Music" takes us on a special journey to the country where
the whole planet focuses on nowadays and music is a matter of
politics, Iran. In the first part of the documentary, Leonidas
Antonopoulos pays a visit to Tehran, a city where despite strict
prohibitions the voice of the young people is heard through rap,
rock, heavy metal and, of course, the greatest voices of classical
Iranian music.
Leonidas Antonopoulos meets the singer Shahram Nazeri, the reviver
of classical Iranian music and the all-female band Rozaneh. We see
the first Iranian rappers recording their songs in secret, the
first Iranian death metal band "Seven deadly Sins", being obliged
to perform in front of a seated audience and never sing their
lyrics in public, and the first mixed gender pop group,
Arian.
In the second part Leonidas Antonopoulos leaves Tehran by car on a
trip beyond phenomena, with Kurdish virtuoso tanbur player Ali
Akbar Morandi being the driver. In ancient Tabriz they had the
opportunity to learn about the age-old Caucasian tradition of the
Asiki, by Asikis Hassan.
Leonidas Antonopoulos also visited a Sufi "opium den" and was
present at an impressive religious ceremony where the believers
came to ecstasy and then went to Iranian Kurdistan accompanied by
Morandi, to festivals and weddings reminiscent of Greece. The
folkloric sounds of the Al-e Haq brotherhood to which Morandi
belongs guided us to every unknown corner of this country.