MUSIC

DISCOGRAPHY

A Moment of Happiness (2005)

Restless (2013)

Open sparkling music, sung freshly by Amiri in which he easily touches the heart of the music. Compositions full of inventive chord progressions and original instrument combinations, all arranged with charming affection.
–Mattie Poels, Musicframes

Babak-o-Doestan’s Restless in the TOP 10 world music albums of 2013 Platomania/Concerto

Buy, borrow or steal it – or put it on your wish list for Christmas!
– Andreas Nöthen, Insight Worldmusic Magazine

CD (Restless) available at live performances or by emailing us Price: 15 euro (free postage!)

LYRICS

The lyrics to Babak-o-Doestan songs are based on Persian poetry. Selected English translations below (our own approximate translations) give a sense of the songs that Babak Amiri sings in the Persian language.

With which hand

I’m losing you
I’m losing you
Sleep, sleep, sleep
She sleeps on the warm sand
Under the sharp sunlight
I love her
I love her
As a seed loves the light
As a meadow loves the wind
As a boat loves the waves
Or as a bird loves the heights
I love her
I love her
With eyes half open
And a weary heart: if you now
in this serene moment of silence
disappear into my arms…
(How do you capture love in eternity?
With which kiss? Which lip? At which
moment? On which night?)
I love her
I love her
I love her
I love her
I’m losing you
I’m losing you

Forough Farrokhzad (1935 – 1967)
(fragments from the poem With which hand)

Colour of Darkness

In this unrelentingly lonely time
in which the lips are depicted with the colour of darkness
a voice is calling me from a distance, but
my feet are cemented in the asphalt of the night

No light to distinguish walls from doors
if a shadow is cast on the ground anyway
then that is a peculiar image
of a freed thought

Sorab Seperhi (1928 – 1980)

Restless

Your feeling of unhappiness
comes from chasing happiness

Rumi (1207 – 1273)

Poetry is Freedom

Poetry is liberation, rescue and freedom
It is a doubt that eventually becomes certainty
It is the freedom bullet
It’s a comforting sigh
It’s the resolve of a stool
That slips under your feet
So the body falls under
The weight of itself
If this is the only road to freedom…..

Poetry is freedom.

Ahmad Shamlou (1925 – 2000)

Wine

Eagle of love
fly from high misty faraway mountains
to the somber desert of my life
and bring me
to where wine will not bring me

Fereydoun Moshiri (1927 – 2000)

I Call Your Name

In the dark
I called your name
it was the silence
and the breeze that lifted the curtain
in the sorrowful heaven
a star shone brightly
in the sorrowful heaven
I called your name
I called your name
and held my existence tightly as a
bowl of milk in my hands
There
in my heart someone sighed
from the pain
someone stood up
someone longed for you
my small seedling was in love with the wind
which means home for the wind
which means home

Forough Farrokhzad (1935 – 1967)

With Eyes

With eyes, amazed by this
misplaced morning
dried out by a skylight of square sun
in the dark white of this heavily pregnant morning
I free my hands of the chains of sleep

I said, nonsense, nonsense, nonsense people
Are you intoxicated or daft
or are you playing the hypocrite
The night is not yet over
If you are a honest pure muslim
you don’t need a predecessor for prayers
Every badmouthed cow turns into
a volcano of fury
See the fool who asks us the reason
for sunshine

I, with pain in my veins
aches in my legs
something like a fire in my soul
I, felt the shattering of my entire body….

Ahmad Shamlou (1925 – 2000)

My Heart Seeks

Every second
at the frightfully enormous sea
is a moment
in a tale
that has already started

Clinging to a night that’s adorned in black
the lump in your throat disappears
the sea rushes in wildly, wave after wave
like an old and fragile thought
in an upwards torrent
as the lump in your throat dissolves

The waves surrender
to the coast with a tempestuous fervour
The hart seeks and blossoms and tingles
and turns away from anyone harbouring an inner peace

With his sleepless eyes that yearn for the sea
he gazes at the beach and those sleeping upon it
he pauses in the shadow of the waves that
lap against the ruins of his home

The heart seeks and blossoms and tingles
The heart seeks and blossoms and tingles

But when the sea is at a loss for answers to his questions
he disappears from the sights of good and evil
he rolls and turns towards the horizon
he disappears but
not from everyone’s thoughts

My heart seeks and blossoms and tingles
My heart seeks and blossoms and tingles
My heart seeks and blossoms and tingles

Nima Youshidj (1895 – 1960)

(back cover, Restless cd)