“Art and Music Can Influence the World: In Conversation with Kamancheh Master Kayhan Kalhor”
Kayhan Kalhor is a master of the bowed kamancheh, a four-string, fiddle-like instrument whose tone ferries traces of melancholy even at its most lively. As he tells it in this new interview with Muslim World Today, he first heard the kamancheh, then very much out of fashion and use, when he was ten and has pursued it relentlessly in the decades since, become its premier global ambassador through collaborations with the likes of Yo-Yo Ma and Brooklyn Rider. He joins Brooklyn Rider and plays a solo set at Big Ears 2019.
On the state of Iranian arts in the wider world, he has this poignant insight: “Considering the political climate of Iran today and the false propaganda going around against Iranian society, we all feel that we need to be heard and that we (as anyone else in this world regardless of where and under what political rulers they live), should not be identified with our politicians.”
