Mohammad Yasemi

Ostad Mohammad Yasemi, known as “Mohammad Kuchak-Beli”, was born in 1335 SH (1956/57) in the village of Kuchak-Bel near Gahvareh in Guran. His father, the late Ebrahim Khan Yasemi, was a player and singer of the kalam maqams, and his brothers, the late Askar Khan and Akbar Khan, were also versed in the maqams and the tanbur. He learned the heritage of the Yarsan rite from them and other masters of Guran. After the death of his father and brothers, family duties and work as a farmer and gardener made life hard for him, but from the 1980s he took up the tanbur and the Yarsan kalam maqams again. At a time when few could record music, cassettes of his kalam singing circulated at the night gatherings of tanbur lovers.

He is counted among the elder performers and transmitters of the Yari kalam maqams of his time. According to his interviewer, after losing his loved ones he sang maqams such as Bariya, Gharibi, Pawa Mori and Mama Sikhani so heavily and sorrowfully that listeners were moved to tears. In the 1980s he set the meeting of Sultan Sahak and Pir Mikail Dudani to a melody of his own (“Aw Pir Mikail Dudani mawa”), which the same source calls the first performance in this style.

The channel “Navaye Tanbur” has posted several of his performances, among them the maqams Sarukhani, Dawala and Bariya, Mohammad Hasan Khani, and Qatar and Bariya with Kourosh Sabouri.

Source: Telegram channel “Navaye Tanbur”, April 2017 to July 2026; biography from an interview by Alireza Abbasi Gurajubi (15 June 2026).