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LECTURE
The violin and our modernity
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In his talk, Reza Farokhfal dealt with the application of the violin in Persian music as a modern “advent”. The short and sad history of the violin in Iran, from its introduction into the indigenous family of musical instruments, till its banishment (“deportation” in Faraokhfal’s terms) from that family, reveals some meaningful correlations with the tragic history of failed modernity in Iran. By briefly comparing the two parallel histories, Farokhfal explained that from the early seventies onward, a dominant “traditionalist” trend in its search for an “authenticity” (esalat) prescribed a “pure essential” form for the Iranian music which led to the deportation of the violin as a Western musical instrument. Such a prescription was, in fact, a privileging of the “spiritual” on the “profane”, “tradition”, on “innovation”, “repetition” on “difference”, “original” on “hybrid”, “local” on “universal” and so on. As a result, Farokhfal concluded that, in favor of the so called “sacred authenticity”, Iranian music lost what he mentioned as the “forbidden earthy”, but very vital attribute of the “amorous”.
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