singer

Vafadari

composer

album

Ariana Vafadari (third from left) performing at the World Sacred Spirit Festival in Rajasthan recently

Singer andAriana Vafadari remembers the first time she sang the Gathas, devotional songs composed by the Iranian prophet Zarathushtra. “There was a big ceremony arranged in Paris to celebrate the Zoroastrian new year,” says Vafadari, who was then 25, “We were all waiting for the mobeds (Zoroastrian priests) to arrive, but they never did and my father asked me to go sing the hymns.” She enjoyed the experience so much that she began improvising with Gathas even as she performed classical recitals and eventually released anbased on the hymns in 2016. While the text to which the Gathas were set — short verses written in Gathic or old Avestan language — continue to be chanted by mobeds, the song form, which existed some 3,700 years ago, was lost centuries ago. “I was the first to set it to music again,” says Vafadari, “Since most of my work is in classical music and opera, I used these genres in the songs, but I composed them on an Oriental scale since I miss that music so much and I also love jazz.”This week, Vafadari, who is in India for the first time, will perform from Gathas, Songs My Father Taught Me, the album that she dedicated to her father who inspired her to begin this journey. “It was really the text of the Gathas that interested me. It is a very modern, open-minded way of thought, which is part poem, part philosophy and part prayer,” says Vafadari. The eight songs on her album, inspired by the Gathas cover vast ground and are ceremonial in that there is a song about beginnings referring to birth (“Ahang Zayesh”), one about weddings (“Burning Dance”), a song for death (“Haunting Melody”) and of course, songs of love. “The album is autobiographical since I have written about several incidents that have affected me,” says the singer. Vafadari, a mezzo soprano, who has trained and worked with some of the finest singers of the Bolshoi Theatre at Opéra national de Paris, renders these songs in a lilting, other worldly voice. Her vocals are accompanied by an oud, which is a stringed instrument similar to the lute, piano, a double bass and ney, a flute used in Middle Eastern music, among other instruments.She studied to be a civil engineer before she took to music full time. “I wanted to be a mathematician, but when I started singing I felt that I could live a 100 lives doing music,” says Vafadari, who, performed at the recent World Sacred Spirit Festival held in Rajasthan, “And I’ve been fortunate to perform at some of the best classical and world music festivals in the world.” For her show in the city, Vafadari will be accompanied by Leila Soldevila on double bass, Haroun Teboul on the ney and Tarit Pal on percussion.Mazda Hall, Dastur Primary School, CampFebruary 22, 7 pm2566 8001Free