Country Music... from Iran

I've just learned about and Iranian-born country artist -- Erfan "Elf"  Rezayatbakhsh -- who a founded a country band -- The Dream Rovers -- a few years ago and has tried to bring country music to his home country.


The web site "Saving Country Music" wrote in an article and interview in January:

He’s a singer and songwriter from Tehran, and along with guitar player Ahmad Motevassel, they are the Dream Rovers.
This is not some weird-sounding Iranian techno music with a banjo slid in there to certify it as “country.” The first album of the Dream Rovers was a covers record that included old country music classics like Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “Sixteen Tons,” and Merle Haggard’s “Hungry Eyes.” The band first formed as the Persian Rovers in January of 2007, and shorty after were forced to go on a hiatus after Elf was conscripted into the Iranian military service. After a few personnel changes, the band re-formed as the Dream Rovers—Iran’s first country music band.

Here's "Superstar," their first official video, released in 2011. The song was insired by Taylor Swift:




The Saving Country Music article tates:

Though most of Western music in Iran can only exist in forbidden, underground channels, Elf and the Dream Rovers were able to present their music publicly at the Sharif University of Technology (SUT) in Tehran on multiple occasions, and for audiences of more than 500 people.
“I was born and raised in a country that has absolutely zero background in country music,” Elf tells Saving Country Music. “Yet I am very passionate about preserving the true country music, which is the most important and authentic part of the American heritage and culture and introduce it to the people of Iran through workshops, concerts, and the release of albums and singles.”

Here's a video of the band performing at the university:




Elf went on to study country music in the East Tennessee State University’s bluegrass, old time, and country music program in Johnson City, Tennessee and graduated Summa cum Laude in 2014. He now lives in Canada.

He and his music were brought to my attention by ETSU Prof. Lee Bidgood, who teaches in the old time and bluegrass program -- and who has been a friend, advisor and sounding board on issues of "the imaginary west" and country music outisde the US ever since we met more than a dozen years ago. Lee's book on Czech bluegrass is coming out this fall, and it is he who was the driving force behind the documentary on Czech Bluegrass, Banjo Romantika, in which I am an onscreen commentator.

The Saving Country Music article concludes -- echoing the words and attitudes of many European country artists:

Erfan “Elf” Rezayatbakhsh and the Dream Rovers may not be your next favorite honky tonk band, but you may also be surprised by their knowledge of country music and proficiency. Like many country music artists and bands from non English-speaking countries, some of the subtleties of the art form can get lost in the translation. But that says nothing about the heart and dedication Elf has brought to the music, recording country songs in both English and his native tongue, and illustrating how even country music, which seems so characteristic of a specific place, can defy borders, and perforate insular environments and the inherent differences between the American and Iranian mindset.
“When there is music, nobody thinks of fighting,” says Elf. “That’s why I came to the United States—not only to study country music in its homeland, but also to travel to the country which had been introduced to me by the media in Iran as ‘the enemy’ and ‘the great Satan’ and see the people, talk to them, and learn about their culture through them.”

Click to read the full article

A Report on the Czech Banjo Jamboree

Caslav massed banjos. Photo © Lilly Pawlak

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

The annual Banjo Jamboree in the Czech Republic, held now in the town of Caslav, is the oldest bluegrass festival in Europe. It's one of the first festivals I went to when I started following the country and bluegrass festival circuit in Europe.  This year's festival, June 21-22, was the 41st edition of the event. It included concerts, workshops, jam sessions, etc. The line-up was almost all Czech bands, with acouple of Americans and others. And there was the tradition jam session -- and photo -- of as many banjo players as possible performing Foggy Mountain Breakdown.

I didn't attend this year. But Lee Bidgood -- whom I met at the Banjo Jamboree in 2004 -- was there, presenting a sneak preview of Banjo Romantika, the documentary about Czech bluegrass that I helped on -- and in which I am featured as a "talking head" expert.

He gave a lengthy and thoughtful two-part write-up of the festival on his blog, with links and photos:

The oldest Bluegrass festival in Europe takes place in a suitably historic spot. The part of its history that you can see in this post is a bit more recent – the Republic of Czechoslovakia (founded in 1918 out of the still-warm ashes of the Hapsburg empire and the rubble of the first World War). The First Republic, as it is termed by Czechs (“Prvni Republika”) is a golden age, during which the country was the 10th larges economy in the world (think about who the major players were and weren’t in that period…don’t think folks in Europe were counting Indonesian or Chinese cottage industries in their tallies…). The traces of the first republic in Caslav include the site for the Banjo Republic festival, an outdoor letni kino (summer movie theater) and swimming pool. The building has the modernist flair of the first republic, including the elegantly minimalist metal railings that characterize villas and office buildings from the period. There is something slightly nautical mixed in with this style: an occasional round, porthole-like window, the railings that look like the top deck of the Titanic, etc. ...

Lilly Pawlak, bluegrass fan and expert extraordinaire, also covers this year's festival on the Czech music web site Music Open.

Her report is in Czech -- but google translate does a fair enough job of giving you the gist, and Lilly includes quite a few pictures.


BANJO JAMBOREE 2013 -- LINE-UP

Friday 21.6.2013 

1. Album
2. Taverna
3. Handl
4. Fámy
5. Poutníci
6. Sunny Side
7. East-West (CZ-SK)
8. Jimmy Bozeman & Lazy Pigs (USA/CZ)

Saturday 22.6.2013
1. Malina Brothers
2. Modrotisk
3. Twisted Timber
4. Abalone
5. Benefit
6. Blue Gate
7. Dessert
break + banjo players photo shooting
8. St.Johnny & The Sinners
9. Wyrton
10. BG Cwrkot
11. Goodwill
12. Black Jack
13. Vabank Unit
14. Louvat Brothers (Belgium)
15. G-Runs & Roses
16. COP 

Czech Bluegrass Documentary Project News

Last summer, when I went into the studio in Prague to help with the recording of Druha Trava's CD Shuttle to Bethlehem, I ended up hanging out and traveling a bit with Lee Bidgood, an American fiddler and mandolinist who teaches at East Tennessee State University, which has a Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music Studies program -- and his colleague from ETSU, the documentary filmmaker Shara Lange.

Lee did his PhD on Czech Bluegrass (we met in 2004 at the Caslav Bluegrass Festival in CZ) and he and Shara are making a documentary film on Czech Bluegrass music and musicians -- I am thrilled to be onboard as a sort of consultant or production assistant....

The film now has a web site -- you can click HERE to find out information, see some video, hear some music and find out more about the project, screenings, events, etc.

One upcoming event is a concert August 8, in Johnson City, TN, at which Lee and fellow musicians will perform Czech translations of bluegrass classics as well as original material by Czech bluegrass musicians, in both Czech and English.

Here's a clip I took of Lee jamming late a night with Lubos Malina, of Druha Trava.

During out brief travels last summer, we also visited Marko Cermak, the godfather of five-string banjo playing in  CZ, at his cabin in the woods. 

Interviewing Marko Cermak. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

According to his own and other accounts, Cermak, who was active in the Czech tramp music scene, built his own long-necked, five-string banjo by studying photographs taken of Pete Seeger at Seeger's seminal 1964 concert in Prague concert. Cermak went on to become one of Czechoslovakia's first banjo virtuosi.

Marko Cermak. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Among other things, Cermak founded one of Czechoslovakia's first American-style country and bluegrass groups, the Greenhorns. The Greenhorns became extremely influential by playing Czech language versions of American folk songs, copying arrangements they heard on American Forces Radio.  In doing so, they, and similar groups, brought these songs firmly into the local musical tradition, fostering a total assimilation of many songs into the Czech repertoire. 

After visiting Marko, we went on to spend the night at the home of banjoist and banjo-maker Zdenek Roh, near Jihlava, where I had visited the previous year with Lubos Malina and Robert Krestan of Druha Trava.

Zdenek Roh. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

Czech Republic -- In the Studio with Druha Trava

In the studio. Photo (c) Ruth Ellen Gruber

By Ruth Ellen Gruber

In mid-July I spent two days in a Prague studio helping record the vocal tracks for a new CD by the Czech country/bluegrass/fusion group Druha Trava. Founded 20 years ago, in 1991, DT and its various members have brought out more than a score of albums, including several in English -- see a history of the group by Lilly Pavlak, posted on the European Bluegrass Blog by clicking HERE

But the new Druha Trava CD  -- tentatively titled "Shuttle to Bethlehem" after one of the songs (the inspiration was Bethlehem PA, not the "other" one) is the first that will primarily feature English-language versions of singer-songwriter Robert Krestan’s distinctive original songs.

I made the translations, and the studio session was the culmination of a collaborative project that had taken more than five years to come to fruition.
 
During the recording session, we were joined in the studio by Lee Bidgood -- a wonderful musician who did his PhD on Czech bluegrass and now teaches at East Tennessee State University, which has a  Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music Studies program -- and his colleague from ETSU, the documentary filmmaker Shara Lange, who are making a documentary on Czech bluegrass. They filmed the session and also interviewed Robert, banjoist Lubos Malina and me.

Lee and me when we met in 2004

Lee is one of the first people I got to know what I was starting to follow the Czech bluegrass scene -- we met at the Caslav bluegrass festival in 2004 and I recall how wonderful it was to talk to someone who also was looking at the scene and the music from the "outside" and considering the same questions that I was.

While he was doing research in CZ a few years ago, Lee kept a wonderful blog  in which he described music and musicians and reflected on the history and trajectory of the music in the Czech Republic. He hasn't posted anything lately, but it is a terrific resource.

I wrote about the Prague recording session this week in a post on the Arty Semite blog of the Forward, describing a bit of the complex process of translation. I started translating Krestan's songs into English in 2006 and continued working on them as one facet of the "Sauerkraut Cowboys/Indian Dreams" project for which I had  a Guggenheim Fellowship and NEH summer grant.

My first goal was basic: I loved the Czech originals, but I wanted to know what they meant. As I started working, though, it seemed much more logical — and in fact, even easier — to put them in a rhyming form that could be sung. The process was surprisingly straightforward.

A young student in Prague, David Kraus, supplied me with word-for-word equivalents. David’s father Tomas is an old friend, the secretary of the Federation of Czech Jewish Communities, but he also knows a lot about the Czech country music scene. In Communist times Tomas’s late brother [Ronald Kraus] produced, wrote and translated songs for several key Czech tramp and country-style groups [including the iconic band KTO]..

I took the words that David gave me, compared them to the rhythm of the original Czech lyrics, and listened over and over to the original songs in order to capture their meaning and rhyme structure as well as to fit them to the melodies.

Czech is a more bristly language than English, with quite different sounds and cadences, and Krestan uses words for their tonality as well as meaning. But remarkably, my lyrics got to a point where they seemed to click into place. Later, Krestan and I spent a couple of sessions together tweaking the English to improve both nuance and “singability.”

In the studio, as Krestan sang into the microphone, I stood in the sound booth with DT’s banjo player Lubos Malina, who is co-producing the CD with Nashville-based Steve Walsh. Five years on, it was the first time I heard the songs sung in their final form. (Walsh oversaw the recording of the instrumentals in Nashville last spring.) They sounded, well, right. I focused on recording levels and intonation, but I couldn’t keep a goofy smile off my face.

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/140290/#ixzz1TEAt1c7T

Here's a brief video clip I took of one of the recording session takes of the song "Before We Say Good-Bye".

And here's the original Czech version, sung by the band performing outside Prague castle in 2009, when President Obama was there meeting with Czech leaders.