Partying With Shadmehr: A Memory by Sahba Sadeghian

I remember sitting in the balcony of a villa in Shomal, it was late, humid and my parents were a little drunk. We had gotten lost on the way to the villa because nobody had cellphones. I must have been three years old. I don’t remember my uncle but he must have been there too, because his friend Alireza was there and he sang and played the guitar. Alireza played and my mom sang Kavir by Habib as everyone quietly listened.

The acoustic guitar craze may have started before Shadmehr Aghili but his rise to fame certainly spearheaded the popular movement. Although he was mainly associated with classical music and the violin during his time in Iran, his career in pop music and his use of the guitar took over in 2001 when he moved to Canada and subsequently to the USA.

What Shadmehr left inside Iran was his legacy and the guitarist archetype remained present at every party during the early 2000s, playing Ebi and Dariush to rooms full of sweaty longing. In a way, this guitarist archetype lead to a unique revival of old popular music and brought its fans into a new context: they didn’t have to play the bootleg cassettes or the cds, they could sing and perform all the old hits themselves.

In the next decade, the popularization of English music brought another wave to the pop culture guitarist types in Iran, many of whom now had more than ten years of popular influence to play with. This new generation of cover stars were not limited to quiet summer gatherings in Shomal and ranged anywhere between Bowie and Pink Floyd to Nirvana, Metallica and most recenty, The Strokes and The Arctic Monkeys.

I want to end this with a small tribute to an old friend Saeed — he played us the blues during many memorable nights in Tehran and always sang with his sunglasses on: hit the road jack!