TEHRAN – The unveiling ceremony of the visual album “Come, O Love,” featuring Iranian tenor Shahram Nazeri and the late Tajik singer Davlatmand Kholov, was held on Tuesday at the Selçuk University in Konya, Turkey, coinciding with the 752nd death anniversary of the great Persian-speaking poet Rumi.

The visual album is written and directed by Shahab Nikman. It includes seven musical tracks and one music video, all jointly performed by two legendary figures of Eastern vocal music, Nazeri and Kholov. Most of the music in this collection is composed by Nazeri and Kholov themselves and is based on their well-known songs, IRNA reported.

“Come, O Love” was produced with the aim of introducing Rumi’s thought and personality, as well as promoting elements of the jointly registered intangible cultural heritage shared among Iran, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Uzbekistan.

The album is one of the works created within the framework of the “Language of Love” project, an international project dedicated to introducing the heritage and thought of 30 Persian-speaking poets of the first millennium of Persian poetry.

This cultural and artistic project began in 2019 during an official program held simultaneously with the International Mother Language Day, in collaboration with the Mana Naqsh Heritage Institute for Culture and Art, the University of Oxford, and the University of Cambridge, and featured a live performance by Nazeri and Kholov at London’s Barbican Center.

Shahram Nazeri, 75, is a contemporary Iranian tenor of Kurdish origin from Kermanshah, who sings Sufi music, classical, and traditional Kurdish and Persian music. He has been accompanied by some of the masters of Iranian traditional music, such as Jalil Shahnaz, Hossein Alizadeh, Jalal Zolfonoun, Parviz Meshkatian, and Faramarz Payvar. He has also worked with his son Hafez, a composer.

“Come, O Love” is the first and only collaborative work between Shahram Nazeri and a non-Iranian singer. 

Nazeri was the first musician to include Rumi's poetry within Persian music, thus establishing a tradition of Sufi music within both Persian classical music and Kurdish music.

Davlatmand Kholov (1950 –2024) was a renowned musician, instrumentalist, and singer who was also highly popular in Iran. 

He was an expert in the southern folk genre of Tajik music called Falak. A multi-instrumentalist, trained in Shashmaqam at the Conservatory of Music in Dushanbe, he was well-known for his works on the two-string dutar, ghijak, and setar, which are popular instruments in Central Asia.

Kholov played and sang poetry of the Sufi poets, mainly Rumi. His outlook was close to Rumi's poetry and philosophy. He also belonged to the post-Soviet nationalist school of thought, or was influenced by Tajikisation, therefore turning his back on Tajik shashmaqam. 

Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, commonly known as Rumi (1207 – 1273), was a Sufi mystic and poet. He is an influential figure in Sufism, and his thought and works loom large both in Persian literature and mystic poetry in general. Today, his translated works are enjoyed all over the world.

The rapidly advancing Mongol hordes forced his family to flee west early in his life. After spending time in various cities across Iran, Baghdad, and Damascus, he settled in Konya with his family at age 19. Although he was exposed to Sufi thought from his early childhood, he was expected to follow his father’s footsteps as an Islamic scholar.

However, the arrival in Konya of the mysterious wandering dervish, Shams Tabrizi, would alter the course of his life permanently. Rumi and Shams became infatuated with each other, causing Rumi to neglect his duties. When Shams mysteriously disappeared, Rumi experienced an intense period of grief reflected in his “Divan of Shams Tabrizi”. This was the defining moment in the evolution of Rumi's spiritual worldview and marked the beginning of his poetic output.

His “Masnavi” is considered one of the greatest poems of the Persian language. Many Muslims, particularly in the Turko-Persian cultural sphere, regard “Masnavi” as one of the most important works of Islamic literature.

Rumi's works are widely read today across his native Greater Iran as well as in Turkey. His poems have been translated into many of the world's languages, and Rumi has been described as the “world's most popular poet”. In the United States, he has become the best-selling poet in recent years.

Photo: Shahram Nazeri (L) and Davlatmand Kholov in an undated photo

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