Iran's Namjoo ignites a thrilling musical ride

Concert review

The lobby of the Sammamish High Performing Arts Center buzzed with the svelte sounds of Farsi as nearly 300 members of the Eastside Persian community gathered for a much-anticipated concert Friday evening by exiled Iranian singer-songwriter Mohsen Namjoo.

The show was presented by the online alternative music magazine zirzamin.com

Namjoo, who lives in Palo Alto, Calif., has not been able to return home since 2007, when an Iranian court sentenced him in absentia to five years in prison for setting words from the Koran to a rock beat.

Namjoo was studying in Vienna when the sentence was imposed.

Iran isn't the only place he's not officially welcome. Authorities in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, canceled a concert scheduled there two weeks ago, calling Namjoo's music inappropriate.

But that wasn't the case on Friday night. The Eastside has a sizable community of Iranians, many working in the tech industry. The concert attracted an upscale crowd that included community leaders and many in their 20s and 30s, with women in fine dresses and spike heels, men wearing trimly tailored coats, overcoats and scarves

This was Namjoo's first appearance in the Seattle area. Though there were production problems, it was a thrilling night.

The 33-year-old singer-songwriter is banned from TV and radio in Iran, but many young fans there have traded his tapes or heard his music on YouTube, said Sanaz Khorami, a young woman who arrived in the U.S. seven months ago.

Because of a confusion between online and box-office ticket sales, some seats were sold twice and the concert was delayed nearly an hour. But Namjoo finally appeared, a slight fellow with two wings of gray hair, wearing skinny jeans and a sweater. Greeted by a standing ovation, he sat down to play.

Namjoo has been called "the Bob Dylan of Iran," but a better comparison is Brazil's Caetano Veloso, in that the Iranian is experimentally minded and self-consciously syncretic.

He divided his concert between a short solo set accompanying himself on four-stringed and two-stringed setar; a jazz-quartet interlude with stand-up bass, drum kit and Fender Rhodes piano; and a more rockish, full-band segment, with two-back up vocalists and electric guitar.

In the solo section, he improvised sliding vocal lines with wild, baroque decorations, shooting between registers and tempos, at one point recalling the mock male-female "conversations" of jazz musician Clark Terry's "Mumbles" routines. At other times, Namjoo sounded as crazed as Captain Beefheart or as gruff as Tom Waits. Then, suddenly, he would flip back to an atmospheric caress, caravaning through a minor vamp.

Some of the solo work, like the rock set at the end, sounded a bit contrived. But the quartet music caught fire, especially on "Chaharga," with Rhodes man Robert Shelton recalling Weather Report. "Mahor," in strutting 7/8 time, played with the idea of an assertive major chord, as Namjoo switched to a twangy, two-string setar and hiccupped his way to a high note. "Shour" arrived in a dramatic, conspiratorial whisper, complete with a long "shhhh. ... "

At one point, Namjoo announced he was playing new material and begged the crowd — festooned with glowing smartphones — not to record or post it to YouTube. The new work seemed to puzzle more than please the audience, which didn't get fired up until the singer opened the rock part of the show with his famous, driving anthem, "Toranj."

Because the show started late, it had to be cut short, since the theater — part of Sammamish High School — was contracted only until 10 p.m. The house lights went up in the middle of a song, then the sound was turned off. Namjoo nevertheless sang a beautiful acoustic encore, a sweet ending for an unusual event.

After the show, Namjoo mixed with the crowd in the lobby, graciously posing for photos.

Paul de Barros: 206-464-3247 or pdebarros@seattletimes.com