Taher Yarveysi

Taher Yarveysi was born in 1940 in the town of Gahvareh, part of Dalahu county in Kermanshah province, into a Yarsan family (the Yarsan being a Kurdish mystical faith). He began playing the tanbur at the age of ten and studied the melodies and maqams of maqam music (maqams being the traditional melodic pieces of the tanbur repertoire) with Master Changiz Farmani. Among his most important teachers were Seyed Vali Hosseini, one of the most eminent players of his time, and Master Birkhan (Lalu Birkhan), one of the renowned masters of the Zardeh area (Dalahu).

Yarveysi also learned the craft of making the tanbur from Master Changiz Farmani and later trained many students himself in Tehran, Kermanshah and the Guran region. He devoted his life to maqam music and the ritual melodies of the tanbur and was regarded as one of the most authoritative references for this traditional music.

Death

Taher Yarveysi died on 16 July 2019 at Bisotun Hospital in Kermanshah, after a period of illness during which he had been in a coma.

Performances

Among the programmes and festivals in which he took part:

• Festival of Culture and Art (1975)

• Mirror and Song Festival (1994)

• Eslamabad-e Gharb Festival of Poetry and Literature (2001)

• Qasr-e Shirin Festival (2001)

• Eslamabad-e Gharb Music Festival (2001)

• Tehran Ritual Festival (2001)

• Sanandaj Festival (2002)

• Zekr and Zakerin (Invocation and Invokers) Festival, Mashhad (2003)

• Sahneh Tanbur Festival (2003)

• Kerman Maqam Music Festival (2003 and 2004)

• Ramsar Festival (2004)

• Performance at the Niavaran Cultural Center (2004)

• Berlin Festival of Ritual Music, Germany (2001)

• Concert in Tajikistan (2004)

• Performance of the ancient maqams of the tanbur at the Conference on the Ilami and Kermanshahi Languages, Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan (2005)

Album

• Majnuni (“Love’s Madness”; a collection of the tanbur’s majlesi maqams, those played at social gatherings)