Aida Shirazi: Shūr

Firstly, I would like to extend my sincerest gratitude to Ascolta for this meaningful collaboration. This piece, titled Shur is dedicated to them. I also would like to thank ECLAT for creating a space for me and my music this year. It’s truly an honor and pleasure. I’m sad to miss sharing tonight with all of you.

 

My initial plan was to provide a written program note with more focused and specific information about my piece, but in light of the recent uprising in Iran which now we call »The Lion and Sun Revolution« met with the most brutal quelling imaginable by the Islamist Regime has left millions of Iranians in my homeland and diaspora in absolute shock, horror, and rage. According to official statistics published by TIME Magazine, the Regime has murdered 36000 people with heavy artillery on the streets of Iran on January 8th and 9th during a total digital blackout, where internet, cell service, and even landlines were shut down. You heard it right; 36000 in two days. To provide some context, this massacre is one of the most gruesome in modern history and comparable to Babi Yar massacre in Ukraine in September 1941, where 33000 Jewish people were murdered by Nazis.

 

The actual number is unknown. Thousands of wounded protesters were kidnapped from hospitals while receiving medical care and shot dead. Many injured protesters refuse to seek medical care at hospitals out of fear of being arrested and killed. Doctors and nurses across the country have been arrested for treating the injured. Thousands of protesters are missing, and their whereabouts remain unknown. Reports of women and minors being raped and sexually assaulted by the regime forces have started to surface. Thousands of protesters are in custody and on the row for mass executions.

 

The Islamist Regime, known for religious extremism and state terrorism, calls unarmed civilians, terrorists and thugs—the very people who came to the streets to peacefully demand the freedom, prosperity, and dignity that all human beings around the world deserve.

 

To say the obvious, my note doesn’t even begin to describe the depth and scope of this tragedy and the atrocities that the Regime is committing against my people.

 

According to Adorno, »to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.« These days, I struggle to find a reason and purpose for my work as a musician, but I find it my responsibility to be the voice and amplify the cause of my fellow compatriots who despite being brutalized, still remain hopeful, resilient, and righteous.

 

In Persian, Shur has multiple meanings. In musical terms, it is one of the main dastgahs of the classical Iranian repertoire radif with a specific tuning system and modal organization which I have been inspired by in my piece. The word also refers to the act of washing and cleansing. The third meaning is salty, and last but not least, shur means passion, intensity, and enthusiams. On an emotional level, I think the title of my piece is relevant to the political and historical context of these days—what a coincidence…

 

Shur is an invitation to an intimate moment of solace, contemplation in memory of courageous innocent lives lost in pursuit of freedom, dignity, and humanity.