Mahdyar on X-posure

2017

John Kennedy played ‘Money Money’ on Radio X’s X-posure and called it ‘extraordinary’.

Listen to the show: Radio X

New track from the brilliant Iranian producer Mahdyar, along with a new interview on his career past, present and future

2017

Tehran-born Mahdyar is an enormous name in Iranian electronic music and hip hop. Beginning his career at just 16 after classical training, having immersed himself into the then-nascent Persian hip hop scene as a producer he went on to become a formative figure in the country’s now bountiful culture of extraordinary electronic music.

It’s taken over a decade of working as a producer for Mahdyar’s debut album of his own Seized to appear, however. In the intervening years he’s expanded his reach into film composition and working with museums and art institutions like Paris’ Centre Pompidou and Sweden’s National Theater Riksteatern.

Read the article: The Quietus

How Hip-Hop Connected the Iranian Diaspora and Taught Me to Swear in Farsi

2017

“Hip-hop is without a doubt the most popular genre for the young generation in Iran,” says Mahdyar, Persian hip-hop’s first and most iconic producer, speaking to me from Paris. “If you’re out on the street you don’t hear rock, you don’t hear electronic – you hear hip-hop and pop – it’s the biggest genre that’s been created by the post-revolution generation.”

“One thing that made Persian hip-hop so popular was the fact that it was uncensored—you were hearing stuff that you’d expect to hear when you were hanging out with your friends, or at home or whatever, but you’d never expect to hear it in a cultural context,” he adds. And he’s right—before the inception of Persian hip-hop in the early 2000s, the majority of popular Iranian music came from aging artists who had fled or been exiled following the crackdown on music made in Iran following the 1979 revolution. In this way, Persian hip-hop could be recognized as the first youth-driven underground movement, granting young people the much-needed space for expression.

Read the article: Vice

De Téhéran à Mashhad, le parcours du combattant de milliers de musiciens

2009

Dans la capitale iranienne, Mahdyar gagnait bien sa vie grâce à sa collaboration avec Hichkas, le roi du hip-hop en Iran. “Ensemble, on a enregistré Asphalt Jungle, un album qui a marché très fort sur iTunes. On allait livrer les CD de la main à la main”, précise-t-il. Multi-instrumentiste, Mahdyar joue du santoor, du qanûn, et aime mixer ces musiques traditionnelles avec de l’électro ou du rap.

Tout allait bien jusqu’au jour où le magazine Nasim-e-Haraz lui a proposé un entretien avec trois compositeurs officiels qui n’avaient aucune estime pour les rappeurs. “Je leur ai expliqué ma démarche, mon intérêt pour les instruments traditionnels. Au bout de trois heures, ils voyaient cette musique d’un autre oeil. L’ennui, c’est qu’à partir de ce jour, les autorités m’ont mis sur une liste noire.”

Lire l’article: Le Monde