Vancouver’s Farnaz Ohadi relishes creative freedom

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      From yearning start to joyous finish, Farnaz Ohadi’s debut album, Bird Dance, follows an ever-ascending path—one that presumably mirrors the Tehran-born singer’s own, from her childhood under fundamentalist rule through to becoming a rising star in Vancouver’s world-music underground.

      And if that’s how listeners perceive the disc, Ohadi will be happy, for it’s exactly her intent.

      “Absolutely, from the very first song,” she says, reached by phone at her West Side home. “The album traces the trajectory of my experiences, from Iran all the way to, basically, today. ”

      That first track, which also gives the album its title, draws on her childhood memories of being a kind of caged bird—a creative girl in an environment that valued neither art nor women.

      “We lived in an apartment, and I remember waking up every morning and being envious of the birds that flew by,” she recalls. “I remember thinking ‘If I could just fly away… I mean, look at them! They’re so free.’ So the whole album is about that bird, and the chorus says exactly that: ‘The cage is small, but I have to sing anyway, and I have a message of happiness and light for you.’ ”

      On Bird Dance as in life, that contentment takes some time to arrive. “Hesar” depicts the feelings of loss and alienation Ohadi and her family felt after leaving Tehran for Toronto in 1990. “Stars”, meanwhile, explores the solace found in looking longingly at the night sky. But by the record’s penultimate track, “Vatan”, Ohadi has found her purpose: to encourage freedom, and especially creative freedom, for the women of Iran, an aim joyously expressed in the closing “Persian Dance”.

      “It’s just literally calling the dancers to basically knock on every door and tell people, ‘Hey, this is now a joyful moment of truth and understanding. Why don’t you come and join us?’ ” Ohadi says.

      What makes Bird Dance even more remarkable is that, musically, Ohadi is telling her story in her third language. The daughter of civil engineers, she grew up with classical piano lessons, and then moved on to singing in government-approved choirs. But her passion is for flamenco, the fiery dance and music of southern Spain.

      Listening to her father’s flamenco recordings provided Ohadi with her first exposure to fandangos and soleares. But it wasn’t until she moved to Vancouver that she realized that she could merge her own story with the Andalusian forms, and she credits local flamenco guitarist Oscar Nieto with encouraging her to write and sing in Farsi, and to bring Iranian instruments such as santur and tar into the mix. “He said, ‘Flamenco is for everybody. You just do your thing, and who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong?’ And that really freed me,” she recalls. “Yes, I will never be able to be what Spanish people are, but it doesn’t really matter. I have my own thing.”

      A thing, she adds, that could only have blossomed here.

      “I’ve been given this amazing opportunity—and that comes with a sense of responsibility,” Ohadi says, adding that the next phase of her journey might involve taking her cross-cultural Mashregh Ensemble to Iran, where women in music still find it difficult to escape traditional roles. “Looking back at all the friends that I grew up with, I realize that I am in a position to make something happen, to show that it can be done.”

      Farnaz Ohadi and the Mashregh Ensemble host a CD-release party for Bird Dance at the BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday (October 1).

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