Happy Nowruz/Nawriz/Navruz/Novruz/Newroz everyone! Nowruz is an ancient festival marking the arrival of Spring, celebrated across the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, South Asia, and the Balkans. Dating back at least 3,000 years, Nowruz is a celebration of rebirth and renewal, of the end of winter and the flowering of the Earth that warm weather brings. In the Iranian calendar, this Nowruz marks the beginning of the year 1398. In this episode, Kamyar and Rustin talk reflect on the first year since Ajam's successful kickstarter, which has given the project enough funds to pay writers and launch new projects. They talk about what is to come in the new year, including a new film project and the return of the mixtapes series. The conversation then moved to the topic of Nowruz and how it is celebrated, before revisiting Ajam editor Beeta Baghoolizadeh's [2012 piece on Haji Firuz and race in Iran](https://ajammc.com/2012/06/20/the-afro-iranian-community-beyond-haji-firuz-blackface-slavery-bandari-music/). ...
In this episode, Kamyar is joined by Murat Keyder, a New York City-based musician and composer, to talk about his recent album, *[Rüya](https://open.spotify.com/album/1UgDWDZVXJRKhyhH7FjBVm?highlight=spotify:track:5OqTvH0D8t0vZBnMDR7rCd)* (2019). He is also the author of *[Learning Balkan and Middle Eastern Music on Guitar](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01N6M5YYE/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0)* (2016). Originally from Turkey, Keyder is a guitarist and oud player, whose music is influenced by many different types of contemporary and classical music from Turkey, the Balkans, Southwest Asia, and other parts of the world. Keyder discusses the importance of improvisation in the creation of the album, and how he was able to incorporate Turkish maqams and other formal traditions into his songs. To listen to the album, [click here](https://open.spotify.com/album/1UgDWDZVXJRKhyhH7FjBVm?highlight=spotify:track:5OqTvH0D8t0vZBnMDR7rCd). ...
In this episode, Ali interviews Dr. Mana Kia, an Associate Professor in Columbia University’s department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies about her book, [Persianate Selves: Memories of Place and Origin Before Nationalism](http://https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=29033) (Stanford University Press, 2020). If contemporary notions of being Persian are rooted in recent history, what did it mean to be Persian before nationalism? In the interconnected spaces of premodern Asia, Persian served as a language of learning and shared communication that facilitated the exchange of texts, practices, goods, and ideas, creating a Persianate cultural sphere. Persian not only provided a shared language but also gave access to a whole series of broader ideas and practices. In this older sense of being Persian, Dr. Kia has uncovered a conception of selfhood based on a very different understanding of place and origin. In it, people always understood themselves in relation to multiple collectives, not singular nations, origins, or ethnicities. Her study argues that the wide range of possible Persianate selves allowed for a type of pluralism that the nation state has been unable to provide, a pluralism that has more promise than the eurocentric notion of tolerance. The types of kinship that are produced through these shared lineages all center around the vast notion of adab. Adab is “aesthetic in ethical form,” a notion of the proper form of things that guides seeing, experiencing, thinking, and even desiring. It was adab, she argues, that kept Persianate worlds together even as their societies collapsed-- providing a shared pluralistic moral order and language that allowed them to reconstitute after each collapse. Key to this were literary genres like poetry or tazkira writing, serving as acts of commemoration in ...
