Esfand

Esfand is the name of the last month of the Persian calendar year, which culminates in the celebration of Nouruz. In Iran and Afghanistan, where the Zoroastrian calendar is used, Esfand is the last month of winter, which already denotes the dawn and the new beginning, so to say. The music of Iranian exile Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz and New Zealander Patrick Stewart, who live both in The Hague, echoes this image: dark and still cloudy, but always moving towards a better future. For himself and his homeland.

In developing Esfand, Rouzbeh Esfandarmaz turned to the rich history of Persian and Kurdish folk music, analysing its rhythmic structure and microtonal moods. He combines the results of this research with electronic audio production, industrial sounds, and minimal wave. The result is a remarkable synthesised dance music that can be categorised as »outernational« but can also stand on its own. Esfand’s appearance at Pop-Kultur will be contextualised by a concert with Stereotype and the talk »Sound of the Revolution« with Matthias Koch and Bahar Roshanai.