A very great master of radif, tasnif and tonbak, Ostad Abdollah Davami, was born in Ta village of Tafresh city, Iran in 1891.
As a teenager he discovered that he had a good, audible and suitable voice, so he decided to learn the elementary principles
of Persian vocal music.
One day he had gone to a gathering in the house of Majd-al-Mamalek that he met Ali Khan
Nayeb-al-Saltaneh. After that he became the student of Ali Khan Nayeb-al-Saltaneh for learning radif and Haji Khan, Agha Jan,
Sama' Hozur (santoor player) for learning tasnif, and the art of tonbak playing. Because of his talent in learning
music, he became friend of great masters of his time such as Mirza Hosseingholi (tar player), Hossein Khan (kamancheh player)
Darvish Khan (tar and setar player), Malek-al-Zakerin (vocalist) and Mirza Abd-al-Allah (setar player). He has trained many
students. He passed away in 1980.
A very great master of tar (Persian six-stringed long-necked lute), Ostad Ali Akbar Shahnazi was born in Tehran, Iran, 1897.
His father, Mirza Hossein Gholi, the great master of tar named him Ali Akbar according to a very old tradition: the
grandson should be named as his grandfather. His grandfather the Ali Akbar Khan of the Farahan village of the Arak city was
a great master of tar. One day after a quarrel with his neighbor he went to the roof to play with his tar named Ghalandar.
Tomorrow of that night they found him died in the roof.
He started learning tar from his respected father at the
age of 7. After five years he reached at the level that he was able to teach some of his father's students.
At the
age of 14 recorded two gramophone disks by playing tar the Persian famous melodies, Avaz-e-Afshari and Avaz-e-Bayat-e-Tork
accompanying the great vocalist Jenab Damavandi.
At the age of 18 after the demise of his father he was the responsible
of his father's class and started teaching them.
He established the Shahnazi Music School in 1929.
He
recorded many pieces with the great vocalists of his time such as Eghbal Azar, Nakisa and so on. Also he has collaborated
with other great master of his time such as Reza Mahjubi (violinist) and Hosain Tehrani (father of modern tonbak).
Not
only he taught his students his father's radif, but also he composed a very beautiful radif and called it radif-e-dore-ye-ali
and taught it to his students too.
He comes from a music family called in Persian Khandan-e-Honar that literally
means art dynasty. His younger brother Abdolhossein was a very good tar player also. Their uncle Mirza Abdollah was a very
great teacher of setar. Ali Akbar Khan's nephew the Gholam Hossein Khan was another great tar player.
He recorded
his radif in 1977. He had recorded his father's radif in 1962.
He passed away in 1986 at the age of 88.
Ostad Hosain Tehrani
Ostad Hosain Tehrani, the very great master of tonbak and the father of modern tonbak, was born in 1912 in Tehran. Once that
he had gone to zourkhaneh (Persian traditional gymnasium) he felt that he loved the tonbak of the morshed (Morshed is the
singer and tonbak player of zourkhaneh that leads the athletes to practise marshal art in zourkhaneh. Morshed literally means
spiritual guide.) So when he went back to their house, he made a hole at the end of a clay vase and covered the bigger mouth
with skin and started playing his first strokes of tonbak on it.
When his father was at work, he was able to practice
in a room. But after some days the neighbors complained to his father that sound of Hosain's tonbak was tormenter. So he stopped
practicing at home and started playing tonbak in the train (at that time it was called in Iran 'vagon-e-asbi') for people.
That train's line was between Lalehzar crossroads and Machine-Garage at the end of the South of Tehran. This was the first
experience of this great master of tonbak of playing in front of people.
According to his interviews he started
learning tonbak seriously in 1929 under the training of the late Ostad Hosain Khan Esma'ilzadeh (great master of kamancheh)
and since at that time there was no notation for tonbak he had to call to mind the rhythms with some interesting phrases such
as 'Yek-Sad-o-Bist-o-Panj' and 'Baleh-vo-Baleh-Ba'leh-Digeh'.
For continuing his studies and research he went to
the classes of the great masters of his time such as the late Ostad Reza Ravanbakhsh and the late Kangarlu. Even he studied
the style of the gypsy tonbak players (tonbaknavazan-e-doregard).
In 1938 he became acquainted with the late Ostad
Abolhasan Saba (multi-instrumentalist) and this acquaintance was an important point in his life and then they became heartfelt
and sincere friends and this friendship continued till to the time of the sorrowful demise of the late Ostad Saba. He himself
said: " except the recitation of rhythms that I learnt from Khaleghi, [the late Ostad Ruhollah Khaleghi was composer
and writer. His famous works are his book on the history of Persian music (Sargozasht-e-Musighi) and his very famous national
composition, Tasnif-e-Ey-Iran.] what I know about the theory and practice of Persian music comes from Saba."
In
1940 after the establishment of Radio Tehran, he and some other artists collaborated with the Radio. In 1941 in the Master
Course Music School under the directorship of the late Ostad Ali Naghi Vaziri (tar and setar player and theorist of Persian
music and specialist of esthetics) he started teaching tonbak. When somebody else became the director of this music school,
the programs of the teaching of Persian music was omitted and the teaching activity of Ostad Tehrani was postponed.1949 after
the efforts of Ostad Khaleghi and some other musicians the National Music School was established and Ostad Tehrani was invited
to teach in this new music school.
In these years after the establishment of National Music Orchestra and National
Music Society, he collaborated with these artistic organizations too.
After these activities the tonbak became more
popular and many volunteers wanted to learn tonbak and Ostad Tehrani invited some of them in order to establish a musical
group for tonbak for the first time in Iran.
After the establishment of Iranian TV in 1958, he started playing tonbak
accompanying Ostad Faramarz Payvar (composer and santoor player).
In the first Shiraz Art Festival (1967) he played
with Ostad Payvar and was the conductor of the tonbak group and one of the tonbak players of the group was Ostad Mohammad
Esmaili.
Not only he was very famous and respectful artist in Iran but also many foreigner musicians had praised
his tonbak. He had also some concerts in European cities such as London, Paris and Rome.
His book Amuzesh-e-Tombak,
even now, is the most famous instructional book on tonbak. Later this book was reprinted and Ostad Esmaili has recorded the
lessons of this book in two cassettes.
Ostad Tehrani recorded some tonbak solos and accompaniments in gramophone
disks and some pieces have been reproduced in a cassette.
In 1972, though he was ill, he recorded his last performance,
rhythms of zourkhaneh.
He was acquainted with 'radif' repertoire of Persian art music and 'tasnif' (rhythmic compositions
of Persian vocal music).
He was kind, smiling, chic (I should explain that he lost one of his eyes while he was
working in a technical workshop in his youth and because of this he was always wearing a smoked glasses), self-possessed and
witty.
Unfortunately after a long indisposition, he passed away in Feb. 25th, 1974.
