Ambassador of Persian Flamenco

An act of defiance and solidarity, the new show by Canadian-Iranian singer Farnaz Ohadi unfolded within the packed auditorium of the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto in mid-November under grey skies. Ohadi left Iran in her teens, unable to sing, perform or even just live her life as a young girl, and emigrated to Canada with no knowledge of English or Western culture. Now she took the stage, veiled all in black, carrying a vase, herself a symbol of the perseverance of women against state and cultural persecution. It was a powerful opening for a show that fused classical Persian song and poetry by Rumi, Hafez and Khayam with Spanish flamenco, worlds colliding in a way that seemed natural yet belied the years of hard work, research and training that went into building this special evening. 

Though Ohadi grew up around Persian classical music from a young age in Iran, it was strangely Spanish flamenco that most captivated her as a kid. Her father had been working in Washington, DC and brought home a stack of recordings, including cassettes and reel-to-reels, from a concert of flamenco musicians. Her dad would put this music on in the mornings, and she grew up immersed in the music. A trip to Spain in her teenage years cemented this love, but it wasn’t until she moved to Vancouver, British Columbia that she was able to study the art form. She also began seriously studying Persian classical singing in Vancouver. Now, she lives in Sevilla, Spain and has dedicated herself to the study of flamenco full-time.

The Toronto show was a world premiere of music from Farnaz’s upcoming 2025 album, Breath, a double album of flamenco songs and rhythms merged with Persian classical voice and poetry. Though flamenco owes a deep debt to North African music, that doesn’t mean merging Spanish flamenco with Persian music came naturally. It took many years of work and study for Ohadi to be able to bring them together. For example, it took years to figure out how to merge the rhythms of flamenco with the cadences of Persian poetry in such a way that flamenco fans would recognise the songs and rhythms and Iranians would be able to understand the poetry. The show was a lavish production; Ohadi flew out an entire flamenco group, including two artists to meld handclapping rhythms, a brilliant percussionist, and guitarist and composer Gaspar Rodríguez, who she worked with closely on the album. She also flew out the celebrated flamenco dancer Antonio Najarro, one of the best in the world.

There was almost a sacred, ceremonial aspect to the show, especially in Ohadi’s slow, deliberate movements. The stage was draped all in white fabric, with a centrepiece of a tree draped in white, and Ohadi used costuming creatively and evocatively. After opening with a haunting dirge from behind a full veil, she lifted the black cloth to show a glittering, spiked headdress underneath. For one song, clearly about motherhood, she sang to a baby made from a creatively folded cloak she had been wearing. The same cloak was taken from her later by the flamenco dancer and used like a matador. She didn’t speak at all during the show, nor did she introduce the songs, but the costuming, choreography and stage blocking helped show what each song was about. For a listener, the songs were melded so effortlessly that the only way to tell whether a song was Spanish or Persian in origin was to listen for the language. However, the themes were universal, tapping into love, joy, loss and death, and anchored in powerful stories of resistance from women in Iran, women and girls who were disappeared or maimed in the course of their protests. The show was visually stunning, with several gasp-inducing moments, either involving Ohadi’s presence or the flamenco dancer bursting onto the stage. When she came to the theme of war, the stage was flooded with blood-red light, and Ohadi’s spiked headdress had become a red mask of death. Ohadi had studied interior design in Canada, which helps explain the careful, long-term preparation that made the show possible, and the costume and set design that took it to the next level. “I never do anything small,” she told me before the show.

Ohadi’s show at the Aga Khan came as part of the 2024 Duende Flamenco Festival. The festival is in its 10th year, each time presented by Aga Khan, an interesting choice as a way to position the Arab and North African roots of flamenco. It certainly fit well, and the museum’s position of supporting pluralism and cross-cultural connections was explained by museum performance art curator Amir Ali Alibhai to open the show. Attendees could wander through the museum’s holdings beforehand, an entrancing combination of ancient Islamic artefacts and thoughtful modern art. It was fascinating to think that just feet from where Ohadi was performing, there was a 15th-century carved wooden panel from Iran of a Hafez ghazal. Five centuries might have separated Ohadi from this piece of art, but the words of Hafiz still rang with power in the halls.