TEHRAN -- Iranian musician Majid Entezami plans to compose a symphony for two dams, which over the past five years have devoured a part of our national cultural heritage.

Entezami will be writing the symphony based on an agreement signed between the Iran Music Association and the Iran Water and Power Resources Development Company in early August.
He visited the Karun-3 and Karun-4 dams last week to draw inspiration for composing his opus, which has been entitled “The Karun Symphony”, the Iran Music Association announced in a press release on its website.
“I was beguiled by the grandeur of the dams. I felt proud of my nationality when I learned that the dams had been designed and built by Iranian engineers without any help from foreign experts,” Entezami said.
“This is first time that I have agreed to compose something when I was not sure whether or not I should tackle it,” he added.
Located about 28 kilometers east of the city of Izeh in Khuzestan Province on the Karun River, the Karum-3 Dam came on line in late 2004, flooding the Izeh region, home to many ancient sites from the Elamite era and several dating back to the Stone Age.
In addition, a number of historical sites, most of them dating back to the Qajar era, and several graveyards and villages containing much valuable anthropological information were submerged when the Karun-4 Dam became operational last March.
The dam was also constructed on the Karun River, four kilometers from where the Bazoft and Armaneh rivers meet on the border of Chahar-Mahal-o Bakhtiari and Khuzestan provinces.
Ancient Iranian sites are also being threatened by the construction of the Karun-2 Dam on the Sussan Plain in Khuzestan Province.
The Sussan Plain is home to many sites dating back to the Elamite, Parthian, Achaemenid, and Sassanid eras.