Dotar: Nazar Mohammad Soleymani
Collected & Researched by: Fozie Majd
Nazar-Mohammad Soleymani
Born in Tayebad in 1908, Nazar-Mohammad Soleymani spent his childhood in the village of Jozeghan near Tayebad, situated in the region of Torbat-e-Jam in east Khorasan, a few kilometers from the Afghan border. Soleymani had come from a line of musicians, his father and grandfather were dotarists, the latter, originally from Heart, had settled in the Tayebad district. Soleymani had learnt the dotar from his father whose playing he considered identical to his own. When I first met him in Tayebad, in November 1972, he was helping in his son's barber shop by extracting teeth, and the young musicians considered him an old guard, preferring the new flashy flamboyant style of dotar playing which had gradually infiltrated the musical scene. Soleymani was undoubtedly the region's most worthy musician, highly proficient in the knowledge of the region's maghams, a master dotarist of virtuosic technique.
In the years 1974 and 1975, he was invited to perform at the festivals of Shiraz-Persepolis, and Tus of Mash-had, and also at Hamamet in Tunisia, where along with the singer Morad-Ali Salar-Ahmadi, their recital was acclaimed as the true music of Khorasan by the press.
Soleymani passed away in October 1979, and was buried at the shrine of a renowned mystic, Sheikh Zeyn-edin of Tayebad. ...
Published [12/11/2003]
