Kayhan Kahlar is more than a brilliant player on the kamancheh (a four-stinged, upright Persian fiddle). He delights in cross-cultural collaboration and his last cd Silent City is about what is music in 21.century going to look like. Created with inventive string quartet Brooklyn Rider, this bracing and exhilarating piece is spectacularly successful. Although it’s more a simply collaboration between friends than attempt to blend East and West, his music contributes to creation a new model of music that feature fusion of traditions, peace and open-mindness.
Q: What was the first time you played with Brooklyn Rider?
Kayhan: I met Nick and Colin in 2000. when we were asked to take part an a grand experiment initiated by cellist Yo-Yo Ma called the Silk Road Project. Language barriers presented formidable challenge, but overarching idea behind the chaos was simple: It was an attempt to expand musical relationships drawing upon the idea of the historic Silk Road trading route as an artery of cultural, economic, religious, artistic and most relevant for us, musical exchange.
Q: How did you start collaboration?
Kayhan: The thing we talk about mostly was the musical cultures that we are coming from. The guys were interested to know about the culture I’m coming from so we were exchanging ideas. Nick and Colin visited Iran five years ago and they met some other musician and historical side of Persian culture. What you see from this ensemble relationship started from there.
Q: We are living in time of East-West political debate. How that affects your collaboration with Brooklyn Rider?
Kayhan: We never actually talk about politics. But this is a crazy combination if you put it into political terms (laugh). US-Iran-Israel all put together. We are just friends who love to make music together. If you want kind of social or political label on it- its something that makes us closer as musicians, as people. And maybe that reflects somehow in the societies. That message could be taken to the political or social level.
Q: In the terms of music, how did you manage to embrace Persian and Western tradition in such a perfect way?
Kayhan: Music is international and I think we can understand anything- African, Indian, Persian …whatever! We might not be able to analyze it in an intellectual way right away, but we’ll learn more about it through practice. Music is not some kind of alien entity! Being open-minded is enough for any collaboration to work.
Q: What was the biggest challenge for you?
Kayhan: I am coming from country that has a bad reputation in media, and unfortunately that can affect audience. When you start something new and people don’t know it, they are defensive in the beginning. It’s really hard to make them listen to you and explain them that it’s just music! Thats the biggest challange- how to make them listen to you.
Q: How do you approach that new audience?
Kayhan: Music has power to make you forgive all prejudices. “Just give us a chance to play for you”- I say. You don’t have to judge- just listen and than you’ll see if you like it! Don’t have to identify it with anything.
Q: Where do you pick the influence of other cultures?
Kayhan: We are doing a lot of collaborations with other musicians from China, Mongolia, Japan, Ireland…In that transition time we are trying to recognize other forms , places and cultures and we are opening up to that. This is the future of arts, whether we like it or not ! It’s becoming really cosmopolitan and international.
Q: How is that different than before?
Its going to take another term, it will become more mature. Music in 21.century is going to be very differnet.50 years from now pure classical music will not exist anyomore. Traditional from Persia or India wil still exist in monumetnal sence of the word but we will have new open audience who will identify a new form of music and new combination of instruments.
Q: What kind of audience is “ideal” audience?
Kayhan: Exactly the one I told you about. The audience that understand experientially. Mixture audience that is open for new things. We play for that new audience right now.
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