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innerviews.org

Here’s an intricate and in depth interview with Anil Prasad for innerviews.org. Anil is a multi-dimensional thinker, a true music lover and music literate! innerviews.org

Iltempo.it

L’Iran, il 4, dopo cortometraggi di Ali Asgari presenta i fratelli Mohsenipour sulla grande musica iraniana, e la star affermata Sussan Deyhim: il Canada poi il 5 apre con un omaggio al loro dio pianistico Glenn Gould, seguito dal Canada Happening con artisti canadesi e il Dominic Mancuso Quintet fra jazz e musica popolare…. ~ read more

Persian Tribune (Online Magazine Version)

I am basically a conceptual artist. Most of the work that I’ve done in any medium has been on the progressive and conceptual side. So consequently my work still isn’t very well known in the Persian community, but only in the cultural part of the Persian community. There has also been a lot of work that I’ve done that has been in collaboration with a lot of various well known artists which are more known to the mainstream community… ~ read more

Persian Tribune (Text Interview Version)

I think there should be a better balance between guiding the interpretation and taking the right steps, instead of tabooing them from touching something that they are not a master of. Well before you become a master at things you have to try it. It is part of the journey. Look at the journey of Buddha, the realization happens after you’ve gone through many victories and half of which have been bad… ~ read more

ARGO: BBC Persian

از همان موقع ما دنبال فرصتی بودیم تا روی پروژه مشترکی کار کنیم که آرگو این فرصت را پیش آورد. الکساندر به من گفت که فیلم سوژه اش سیاسی است و می تواند موضوع حساسی باشد. الکساندر به من گفت که فیلم سوژه اش سیاسی است و می تواند موضوع حساسی باشد… ~ read more

ARGO: Composer Alexandre Desplat on Preventing Ben Affleck’s Film from Sounding “Cheesy” and Creating Zero Dark Thirty’s “Middle Ages” Score

The first half of the film is all made with Occidental instruments. When we get to the Iranian airspace, you hear this voice—this great Persian singer Sussan Deyhim does a sort of jazz scatting, but in a Persian way. And on top of that, she sings a melody like a lament. That is going to keep on going during the moments of fear and emotion during the second half of the film. Around her are these incredible musicians from Turkey and France. We locked ourselves in Capitol Records, and I specifically had them play what I had written, showing them the patterns and teaching them every detail of the melodies…. ~ read more

ARGO: Iranian Vocalist’s “Mysterious Sound” in Argo’s Score

Iranian vocalist and composer Sussan Deyhim is the mysterious sound heard throughout composer Alexandre Desplat’s Oscar-nominated score for Argo. Deyhim’s voice becomes an instrument that is used dramatically, percussively, and melodically. Argo’s original score by Alexandre Desplat is nominated for an Academy Award. Since its release, Argo has won Best Picture at the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes… ~ read more

ARGO: Entertainment Weekly

Regardless of whether he’ll walk away with his second Golden Globe statue on Sunday, Desplat’s music made quite an impact on film in 2012. EW checked in with him to talk about some of his recent films. Click past the jump to see a featurette on the making of the Argo score… ~ watch video

ARGO: Examiner.com:

With Oscar buzz surrounding the forthcoming Ben Affleck-directed, George Clooney-produced dramatic thriller Argo, acclaimed Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim, who contributed music to the score by French film composer Alexandre Desplat, is especially excited about her Oct. 14 at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles—two days after the film opens…

Hollywoodtoday.net:

Sussan Deyhim accomplished with her voice was a revelation. Pointing out that she was an Iranian woman being accompanied by a Jewish brass player and a Jewish bassist, she created an atmosphere in which we could no longer believe in the current political fire that is ready to ignite the spaces that separate Iran from Israel, from the United States, and from most of the Western World. I could see directly why there was a time – ancient Egypt and the old Orphic Tradition, to name but two – when music was the master teacher simply because it restores the soul; it opens the mind like a great lens so that your eye is my eye, is the bee’s eye, is the whale’s eye, is the eye of Earth peering out into endless reaches of starry grandeur and mysterious forms of life waiting to be born.

Without artists the Earth would already be scorched a thousand times over: ashes unable to eke out any more green shoots. For seven hours at the Avalon the green shoots of hope were everywhere. The growth could not be contained. Befitting the ecstasy at the end, my camera battery ran out and I could no longer record: instead I jumped on the green wave and vanished into a world worthy of our protection and – as all the artists stated all night – our undying love, that creative courage sustains as a matter of course. Sussan Deyhim had a smile that transcended every border man has ever created. It was art and artists who united Iranian and Jew on the stage – and labored together to bring the house down. Glorious harmony as voice, bass and brass – including a ram’s horn – alternated with feverish excitement. It was the trance of the spirit of our own time, gathering itself up to survive intact, smiling, passionate, capable, able to see its way through illusion and false paths.forms of life waiting to be born.

Spinner.com: City of Leaves Bridges Tehran to Tarzana

Sussan Deyhim’s bracing new album, ‘City of Leaves,’ is an amalgamation of all the vibrant phases of her life: her upbringing and musical training in an Iran that shifted from wide cultural embrace to closed and repressive. More than 27 years in the challenging art laboratory that is Manhattan. And recently from a vantage in the hills overlooking Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley.~ read more

LA Times:

Sussan Deyhim is one of Iran’s most potent voices in exile for the simple reason that she possesses a marvelously potent voice. She wails and coos and ululates, the sound of the soul in translation. When she sings low and gravelly, she transforms herself into an earthy, erotic chanteuse. When high, she flies free with the birds…
~ read more

National Geographic.com:

It’s been almost 10 years since Persian singer Sussan Deyhim knocked our socks off with Madman of God, but now she’s back with another stunner – and this time she’s joined by a veritable who’s who of collaborators, including Richard Horowitz, Bill Laswell and DJ Spooky. Available on CD January 31st.
~ read more

World Music Central.org/city-of-leaves

The album is a profound testament to Sussan’s belief in the eternal alchemical and transformative power of music, despite the tyranny against women in her country.
~ read more

The New York Times

“Sussan Deyhim creates thrilling music that sounds in the ear long after you’ve left the show.”

LA Times

“The extraordinary Deyhim, a computer age coloratura has conquered unimagined realms…”

LA Times

Sussan Deyhim is one of Iran’s most potent voices in exile for the simple reason that she possesses a marvelously potent voice. She wails and coos and ululates, the sound of the soul in translation. When she sings low and gravelly, she transforms herself into an earthy, erotic chanteuse. When high, she flies free with the birds.
Her country, where she cannot return, now discourages music. Maybe the time has come for her bigger musical guns.

Bobby McFerrin on Sussan Deyhim

“Sussan Deyhim is a fascinating original voice in music and the arts. Her rich and complex vocals are warm, beautifully sung, and always surprising. I’m proud that she is and has been a member of our ‘Voicestra’ for many years.”
~ read more

Out of Faze review

“…The range of personalities co-existing in her vocal cords is astonishing, and she can effortlessly move from seductive to militant, make you melt just as easily as scare the pants off you.”
~ read more

Iranian expatriate artists’ projects give voice to countrymen

“…Deyhim said she believed that, despite the government’s ongoing crackdown, the recent protests had given many Westerners a more nuanced view of Iranian society and culture. The protesters’ courage under fire, their sophisticated use of Twitter, flip-cams and other mass-communication tools, and the glimpses that the demonstrations gave of resolute women presented an image of a cultured, cosmopolitan society, in contrast to the monolithic, drably fundamentalist picture of Iran that Western media usually depict.

“We’ve gotten an amazing, amazing look at what Iran is really about in the last couple of weeks,” she said. “Whatever has happened for the last 30 years is in no way representative of Persian culture. It’s just a dark moment.” ~ read more

Showtime’s “Sleeper Cell” Spawns Soundtrack

Madman of God (Crammed Discs craw 22, 2006)

The Sufi are a minority sect in the Muslim world, their belief in music and poetry as means of spiritual enlightenment running particularly contrary to the prevailing (and misguided) image of Islam as a religion that seeks to suppress such forms of artistic expression. It’s Sufism that fuels such musical styles as qawwali and Gnawa trance, and it’s what inspired influential poets like Rumi. The words of those 11th to 19th century mystic poets and the classical Persian melodies that turned them into songs are the basis of Sussan Deyhim’s Madman of God.
–Shepherd-Express (Milwaukee, WI)
-May 18, 2006

Madman of God

(Crammed)
The Sufis were always masters of ecstasy, the art of escaping the prison of individuality in union with all. Music and dance were among their vehicles. Sussan Deyhim, a young woman of Iranian descent working in New York, approaches Sufi songs with a contemporary attitude yet respectful to the form and spirit of the music and words. Augmenting the traditional Near Eastern strings and percussion instruments with cello, acoustic base and a glittering beading of electronics, Deyhim weaves her ancient melodies and poems into a textured sound reminiscent of Dead Can Dance.
–David Luhrssen

To Evoke and Live the Vibration
In Conversation with Sussan Deyhim

With her voice Sussan Deyhim is able to achieve miraculous feats of tone, vibration and timbre; and yet these are not mere acrobatics. The term “sussantics”, dubbed by members of Loop Guru to describe her incredible vocal range and innovative techniques, hardly does her work justice. Much more than antics or vocal gymnastics, her vocalizations reflect her uncompromising spirit of experimentalism, of working from within various traditions in order to push them further into new musical forms.
–By Richard di Santo
28 October 2001

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