STREAM: "Sprout and the Bean" (Joanna Newsom cover)
http://sholi.imeem.com/music/fxCX1w1..._and_the_bean/

STREAM: "Hejrat" (Googoosh cover)
http://sholi.imeem.com/music/1mNKslB...ogoosh_hejrat/

SF band Sholi has put the finishing touches on their new 7" single Hejrat for the Holocene Music label (out Feb. 12), the A-side containing a cover of "Hejrat" by Iranian superstar diva Googoosh, and the B-side a cover of Joanna Newsom's "Sprout and the Bean."
Greg Ashley from the Gris Gris engineered and mixed. KutMasta Kurt mastered it.

Sholi has previously released an EP, a split single with The Dead Science and recently wrapped up recording its debut full-length album with Greg Saunier of Deerhoof in the control booth. The album, which at press time is still untitled, will be released later in 2008.

Sholi band leader Payam Bavafa is of Iranian-American descent and discusses the juxtaposition of these two cover songs:

Googoosh was the most famous pop-singer of Iran before the Islamic Revolution in 1979. She was more than just a singer, but a cultural icon of the time and a voice for women. After Khomenei came to power, pop-music wasn't allowed in the country and she went into a 20 year silence. Many Iranians fled to the States and to Europe, and her music soon became the soundtrack of their former lives in Iran before everything was changed. She is in a great sense the music of expatriate Iranians looking to their past (on the TV screen, satellite radio, old recordings) for understanding their cultural identity. The song we cover of hers is known to be her most beautiful and well-known amongst Iranians. It is a romantic tune called "Hejrat", meaning "Migration", originally written about a lover leaving... I'm trying to reframe the meaning of this song to be about Iran itself and the many diasporic Iranians.

Check out a video of Googoosh performing "Hejrat" here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lspH0xvULoY

Joanna's track, "Sprout and the Bean", is something you might have heard before. It is off of her debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender. I chose this one because I think it is beautiful, and poses an interesting counterpoint with "Hejrat" thematically. The song climaxes with a chorus of voices asking, "should we go outside?". Googoosh's answer, through "Migration", the name and theme, is delivered on SIDE A. The backwards sequencing here - implying action or "migration" preceding thought or choice or questioning - is suggestive of many Iranians' sudden plight at the turn of the revolution. A larger number of these exiles still look to the past for answers in their search for happiness and a sense of cultural identity. While Joanna's (and subsequently, many modern Americans') existential dialogue is far-removed from imposing political pressures, Googoosh's (and the subsequent expatriated Iranians') dialogue is heavily centered on their cultural displacement.

I chose Joanna as this counterpoint figure because she represents many of the qualities removed from Iranian culture post-revolution. She is a privileged youth with a classic "world of opportunity" as an American. She embodies the fantastical and other-worldly, and works with an illustrious and mystical universe created for and by the narrator. Her work transcends her audience forward into a fantasy realm rather than backward into a nostalgic one; its full of "danger of broad boats", "hollow chatter of tadpoles", among a myriad of other pseudo-nonsensical constructions that are characteristic of her free-form expression.

Conversely, Googoosh might have at one point represented a privileged or trained young child-actor star, turned into a pop-goddess. But what she represents now repressed cultural icon (only recently coming back to the limelight with some very highly anticipated tours outside of Iran). Her songs are mostly romantic in nature. Her work, in its current context, most often interpreted as nostalgic, turning listeners back to the way their lives were before political circumstance changed everything.

I find myself engulfed in both of their worlds, and this release is my own exploration of cultural identity as a first generation Iranian-American. The current political landscape between the two countries inspired this to a certain degree, and one of the ambitions behind the project would be to turn each artist's respective audience to a music and culture they may not be familiar with, and to perhaps provoke some thought into that cultural/political landscape and the themes underlying.

SHOLI TOUR DATES

01/12 Portland, OR Rotture w/ The Dead Science
01/13 Seattle, WA 1004 NW 65th (House Party)
01/17 New York, NY Mercury Lounge
01/17 Brooklyn, NY Galapagos
01/19 Brooklyn, NY Union Hall
01/21 San Francisco, CA Cafe Du Nord w/ Castanets
01/22 Davis, CA Fort Douglass w/ Castanets
01/23 Sacramento, CA N St. House w/ Castanets
01/24 Fresno, CA Club Fred w/ Castanets


www.myspace.com/sholimusic

www.sholi.com

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