Namjoo and Faraualla chart a soul’s journey westward

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      Mohsen Namjoo’s wildly ambitious On the String of the Tear’s Bow deserves to come with its own tour guide, or perhaps a treasure map. Although soundly rooted in the passionate rhythms and metaphorical poetry of the singer-songwriter’s native Iran, it also encompasses the overtone-singing traditions of Central Asia, liturgical music from Italy, and what sounds like a Sufi zikr, or ecstatic prayer ceremony. African drumming underpins medieval hurdy-gurdy; field recordings of chanting monks are woven in and out of full-band performances; and Namjoo’s song titles reference such disparate sites as the Persian city of Isfahan, the historic kingdom of Sind, and Baluchistan, which straddles the borders of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.

      Unsurprisingly, the recording has an underpinning theme: a soul’s voyage from east to west, along the ancient trade route known as the Silk Road. But for the 42-year-old Namjoo, On the String of the Tear’s Bow is also a document of his own private research into the vocal traditions of Europe and Asia, during which he taught himself a variety of singing techniques that are far from the keening, melismatic style that he grew up in.

      “As a singer, I was thinking of why, in our regions—like Turkey, Iran, and the Arab countries—the artistic value of a singer is in having a very high-frequency sound,” he tells the Straight, speaking from his New York City home. “And I was wondering why, in Mongolian music or Tibetan music, it’s the opposite; they have a very low-frequency sound. That’s why, for getting these techniques, I went through this journey.…And then the idea of mourning came up.”

      Namjoo realized that he’d hit on something universal. Joining forces with the Iranian-American photographer Shirin Neshat and the Italian performing-arts impresario Franco Laera, he first developed On the String of the Tear’s Bow as an interdisciplinary art piece: part vocal recital, part installation, part multichannel audio extravaganza. His newly released CD followed, and now he’s putting a somewhat pared-down version of the project on the road—minus the visual component and elaborate sound system, but with his accomplished band and the Italian women’s vocal quartet Faraualla, whose contributions to On the String of the Tear’s Bow are integral to the record’s success.

      Namjoo credits Laera with instigating this very fortuitous part of the collaboration. “He told me ‘This project is much too eastern. It needs something from the West, from the western part of the Silk Road.’ And so he introduced me to these four ladies, and I was amazed from the first time I heard them,” he says. “Their own music is a mix of some Italian folk songs from the Renaissance to now, and they have their own modern a cappella pieces, and also they do a lot of classical music. They’re amazing! So I thought of using them as a bridge, to complete this concept about a journey between East and West.”

      Namjoo admits that he was thinking primarily about their sound when he invited the four members of Faraualla onboard. But by adding women’s voices to his mix, he’s come up with something that’s even more universal than he’d intended.

      “That was not in my mind, at the inception,” he says with a laugh. “But after that, I thought, ‘Okay, why not? That’s great!’ ”

      Based on an initial run of shows in February, audiences have thought it great too. “It’s 62 minutes of music without any breaks, and we asked people to not take videos or photos, just sit there and listen to this journey,” Namjoo explains. “And at the end of the day, they were happy with that. We didn’t have any bad comments.”

      Mohsen Namjoo and Faraualla play the Vancouver Playhouse on Monday (June 11).

      Mohsen Namjoo, "On the String of the Tear’s Bow"

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