Outing Iran: Bijan Mortazavi

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

I was watching clips of this concert on YouTube and was reminded of your "Outing Iran" series. Bijan Mortazavi is both a popular singer and one of the masters of violin (with his signature white violin).

From a recent press release:

Musically gifted since he was three years old, Bijan mastered the Violin, Piano, Guitar, Percussion and folk string instruments including the Oud, Tar and Santur by the age of seven. At fourteen, the Iranian native was composing arrangements for thirty piece orchestras in his home country, and by his twenties he was doing the same in the United States. [...] But with the rising popularity of pop music and globalization, Persian teens have become disconnected from the rich cultural music of their ancestors, preferring to listen to modern pop instead of folk. Seeing this unfortunate disconnect, Bijan set out to pioneer songs that would fuse traditional Persian music with new age pop to keep the roots of Persian culture alive in younger generations.