Hjirok

HJirok is a collaboration between Iranian-Kurdish singer Hani Mojtahedy and producer Andi Toma from the German IDM (intelligent dance music) duo Mouse On Mars. Mojtahedy’s Persian and Kurdish classical singing techniques are mixed with Sufi percussion rhythms, snippets from regional melodic instruments and sounds collected during travels through the Iraqi part of Kurdistan. The opening track ‘Sanandaj’ (named after the city Hani Mojtahedy grew up in in North-West Iran, a capital of Iranian-Kurdish Sufism) starts with spellbinding vocals but then transforms into heavy percussive trance music. The third track on Hjirok, ‘Yahu’, is sung over Persian tombak drums in a complex irregular metre, first with electronic sound effects and later a Persian setar lute. In ‘Jin Bo Chie’, sounds like the drums and ney flute of the Egyptian moulid Sufi ritual accompany Mojtahedy’s vocal melismas. ‘Meselek’ evokes a musical road trip through the region, with scattered sounds as if coming from a radio in a passing car, a voice inside the car reciting a story, and stopovers taking place in villages to attend spiritual gatherings.

Kurdish culture, Sufism and womanhood are under duress in the region, certainly in Iran, so maybe it is not for nothing that the opening track is named ‘Sanandaj’ and the final track ‘Tehran’ (where HJirok for the moment could never perform).

Like on Naujawanan Baidar’s Khedmat Be Khalq, which I reviewed before, a distinctive genre of folk-IDM seems to be evolving in the region; Egypt’s Maurice Louca, Morocco’s Remix Culture and Syria’s Hello Psychaleppo are other harbingers.