Amir Koushkani and Eyvind Kang - Sufi Invocation

First track from the 2001 album "In the Path of Love"
"Improvisations on classical Persian and Indian music"
Amir Koushkani - tar
Eyvind Kang - viola
All songs produced and composed by Amir Koushkani
Viola Improvisations by Eyvind Kang
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(From an interview with Mat Probasco in Auditorium magazine - http://auditoriummag.com/mag/portfoli...)

(MP)Where did the Persian influence come from? Your album In The Path of Love with tar-player Amir Koushkani is so beautiful.

(EK) I had met Amir in the 90′s through the scene of musician friends in Vancouver. I really knew nothing of Persian music, and all we did was talk and improvise. And we recorded that record under those conditions. At that time I approached it through my interest in, and experience – humble as it was – with Indian music. Although I had relatively short period in my life when I was really practicing and studying northern Indian music, I had a really good teacher, Dr. N. Rajam, who’s also my favorite violinist, from a purely instrument point of view. And she said, I want to give you a concept of this thing called raga. And that was the beginning of a whole ear-opening journey. She gave me that over the period of several months, but simply through the experience of playing, repeating her phrases and playing back what she was playing to me, as best as I could. Then I started to see what the concept was. So I brought that with me back to my friends at home and I thought, Persian music and Indian music are definitely related. … There’s a different tension. They’re kind of very distant cousins.

(MP) Tension in composition or performance?

(EK) Both. That’s what they have in common; composition and performance are more intwined than in Western music. The repertory of phrases is like that; so each musician has a second key of melodic ideas that he or she can play – sort of memory palates to choose from.

(MP)So not necessarily on the page?

(EK) Mostly memorized. But, named. In the classical Persian repertory pretty much every melody has a proper name. It’s beautiful; it’s fascinating.