The Nightingale of Iran: Hidden Melodies of Persian Jewish History
Written by Shlomit Ovadia of JCC Denver
On April 1 at 6:30 pm, the Mizel Arts and Culture Center is teaming up with the Rocky Mountain Jewish Historical Society located at the University of Denver to bring the Dardashti sisters to perform in the Elaine Wolf Theatre. The sisters will be bringing their story to life during an interactive performance, where they will touch upon themes of early Zionism, the Iranian music ban, and untold Middle Eastern Jewish traditions.
Click on the image to listen to the podcast!
Galeet (left) and Danielle (right) Dardashti are the two sisters who created this podcast.
I met with the Dardashti sisters to discuss the podcast and what people can expect at the live performance.
Q: How has making this podcast inspired or changed you?
Danielle: It changed my view of myself. It has connected me to that Persian part of myself which I wasn’t really connected to. It was a transformative experience for me in ways I don’t know if I’m fully aware of yet.
Galeet: I started researching my family in my 20s and 30s, and it was a big incentive for going to graduate school, because we weren’t really connected to the Persian piece of our family’s heritage. Over the years of writing and discovering this group of Jews, I realized there was no awareness; I had no cohort or friends who were interested in exploring these heritages. But when I was doing research in Israel, I saw how young Middle Eastern and North African Jews had begun delving into their histories. I brought that awareness back to the States with me after doing my major field work as an anthropologist. Now in the last eight years in the United States, I’ve seen a big change…Jews who were interested in exploring their own cultural heritages.
Farid Dardashti, Galeet and Danielle’s father, performs here. (Photo courtesy of Galeet Dardashti.)
Q: What do you hope people will take away from this podcast and live performance?
Danielle: What I hope people will get, and what people tell me they are getting from our podcast, is inspiration to interview their families about the past and really record and capture those stories and memories. There is no way to [do so] without asking questions to those aging family members of ours. Hit record on your voice memos or video record on zoom …to preserve those stories for ourselves, our children, and future generations.
Q: Galeet, you are a singer of Middle Eastern tunes, but you did not grow up singing that way. Did the Iranian way of singing come naturally to you as an adult?
Galeet: Not all of it was easy. I immersed myself in the music, I started out as a voice major in college [but] when I started to try singing Persian classical music, it was a challenge, I didn’t think I could make my voice produce those Persian yodeling sounds. When I was studying music in Israel my teacher gave me advice, saying it was kind of like crying, and that opened this understanding up in my body. Even though it was so foreign to me it became something, I somehow connected through my genetic memory.
Q: What does Zionism and the Diaspora mean to the Iranian Jewish community?
Younes, (far right), and Houri Dardashti and their children post in this photo from mid-20th century Iran. Younes rose to national fame and became a favorite singer of the shah. (Courtesy Galeet and Danielle Dardashti)
Danielle: The podcast shows what Israel has meant to the Jewish people before modern Zionism and European Zionism. Through our family’s experience, the podcast explains how Israel kind of lived in the minds of Jewish people in the Middle East for centuries, and what it meant to be a Jew during that period. The phrase, ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ is not about a physical place but the idea of being somewhere safe, this aspirational, far-off hope at the end of the tunnel.
Galeet: The whole concept of what is Diaspora is turned on its head a little bit because of the dominant Israeli narrative that people would come to Israel and be saved from [destitution in] their home countries, but there was a time when Jews in Iran and other Middle Eastern countries really were thriving for generations, and Iranian Jews were able to travel to Israel and back for a period of time until the ban.
Q: Both your grandfather and father, when they moved to Israel and Los Angeles respectively, struggled to gain receptivity to their once-famous musical followings in Tehran. Why do you think that was?
Danielle and Galeet Dardashti listening to a recording as young girls.
Danielle: The communities at that time—both in Los Angeles and Israel—in the 70s, were not really interested in Jewish Iranian music because of the stigma. Iranians were trying to become more Israeli and Ashkenazi in Israel and trying to become more American and Ashkenazi to blend in when they arrived in Los Angeles.
Q: What can people expect of your performance on April 1?
Danielle: It’s a multimedia show that involves storytelling, music, video, and clips from the podcast, as well as Galeet singing. We’ve adopted and performed it for live audiences all over the world. Some people have listened to the podcast, and some are coming in with fresh eyes who have not listened to it before. It is an encapsulation of the podcast in a 40-minute stage show with visual elements.
