Fereydoun Haghighi

Fereydoun Haghighi (born 1960/61 in Kangavar) is a tanbur player and maker who has been building tanburs for several decades. He is best known for the tantar, a new instrument based on an idea of Seyed Khalil Alinejad.

Training

He learned the basics of tanbur making for about a year and a half in Fash village near Kangavar with Ostad Yadollah Ashrafi. Together with Iraj Haghdoust and Siavash Ashrafi he then opened a workshop in Kangavar whose instruments bore the “Majzub” mark.

In 1984/85 he met Seyed Khalil Alinejad in Sahneh and was so captivated that he saw instrument making as the best way to be near him. He continued his training with him, and when Seyed Khalil moved to Tehran to study at the University of Art, Haghighi went with him. For about six years the two made instruments together in a house in Tehran.

The Majzub workshop

The Majzub workshop is one of the long-established workshops for making and repairing tanbur, setar and tar, with more than three decades of history. Haghighi carries on this family trade with his two sons.

The tantar

The tantar combines the tanbur and the setar: one side is a setar, the other a tanbur, without a separate bowl, so the player can turn the instrument over mid-performance and switch from tanbur to setar. The first tantar was made in 2003 (1382 SH) at the Majzub workshop. The House of Music of Iran recognised it as an invention, and it was registered on 23 August 2004 (1 Shahrivar 1383) under no. 30204. Its small size and portability are among its qualities.

On the tanbur

Haghighi sees the tanbur as an instrument with inner, spiritual roots — “the instrument of love”. He points to the mystical story in which the soul entered the human body on hearing the tanbur, and to verses by Rumi and Attar about it. He says he has seen how strongly the sound of the tanbur moves listeners on his trips abroad, and believes that the maker’s inner state while building, more than the tools, enters the sound of the instrument.

He is counted among the good tanbur makers alongside Asadollah Farmani and Saeed Zolnouri.

Source: his profile on tanbur-music.ir.