Majid Zarei

Majid Zarei is a maqam singer (maqam: a traditional melodic piece of the tanbur), tanbur player and poet. Between 2016 and 2018 the channel “Navaye Tanbur” published dozens of his performances of tanbur maqams, among them Qatar, Bariyeh, Khamushi, Sarukhani, Sartarz, Gharibi, Tarz-e Rostam, Baba Na‘usi, Shah Khoshini, Paveh-mori, Hejrani, Soltan Dineh, Davaleh and the preludes Pardiwari and Sheikh Amiri. In some of them, such as Hejrani and Paveh-mori, the poem, the tanbur and the singing are all his own. Among his Kurdish poems is one in praise of Dol Dalan and Tutshami, which ends with a line in which he calls himself “Majid, the least, the dust of your threshold”.

Zarei leads the tanbur and kalam (sacred Yarsan hymns) ensemble Divanegah. The group went on pilgrimage to the Heydari tekyeh on 22 March 2017, on 5 November 2017 and again on 22 March 2018, playing the tanbur and singing kalams there. He has also led collective kalam singing, for example on the first night of Khavandkar (31 October 2017); a collective kalam with Ghobad Ghobadi was also shared by the channel.

He has sung maqams with other groups as well: in December 2017 he was the maqam singer of the Mehregan ensemble at the Zagros Hall in Marivan, with Seyed Qodrat Alavi and others on tanbur. In January 2018 he was the singer of the tanbur ensemble Yad-e Yaran, with Sirous Karami, Arash Salimi and Milad Mohammadi, at the city hall and at the opening of a documentary photo exhibition on the Kermanshah earthquake; later that month the municipality and city council of Kermanshah gave the group a certificate of appreciation. On 24 August 2018 he sang maqams, with Seyed Qodrat Alavi on tanbur, at the Festival of Unity and Solidarity of Iranian Peoples.

Zarei also teaches the Yari maqams to children; performances by Mohammad Veysi and Parham Najafi, two of his young pupils, were published by the channel.

Source: Telegram channel “Navaye Tanbur”, March 2017 to August 2018 (captions of performances and photos).