At only 23, Mostafa Heydarian, born into a family of luthiers, is the young maestro of the tanbur, a string instrument saturated with harmonics, from the Iranian part of Kurdistan.
Heydarian was born on the first of January, 2002 in Kermanshah, a city in western Iran. Kermanshah is the home of the tanbur, a pear shaped lute whose origins can be traced in the region for more than 5000 years. The Yarsans, a millennium sect of Kurdish people, have long made this region of the country their home. Their mystic rituals (jâm) are performed with tanbur, and the sacred music they play is a heritage that is steeped in one thousand years of tradition. Mostafa’s father, Morteza, was a percussion player whose main musical instrument was the dâf, a frame drum. At the age of twenty, Morteza started learning tanbur crafting, and it is in these overlapping worlds of tradition, family, faith, and culture that Mostafa is born.
There are pictures of Mostafa holding a tanbur before he can even walk. At around seven years old Mostafa began to learn Yarsan’s maqams (modes/scales). Also around this time the family moved to Karaj, a city located one hour west of Tehran, a move that provided more opportunities to meet musicians that regularly drop by Morteza’s tanbur studio. It is here that Mostafa takes lessons from a number of master teachers (Ostads) and absorbs the sounds of the tanbur on the many cassettes in his father’s cupboard.
Everyday after school he rushes to his father’s workshop and allows himself to drop the tanbur only for dinner. His mind is obsessed with playing and listening. In his dreams he sees the late tanbur master Seyyed Amrollâh giving him advice. His path is clearly on the tanbur side.
