Before knowing something about Western music, I was trying to just base the lyrics on old Persian poets like Hafiz, Rumi. They were living 700 years ago, 800 years ago… When your approach is formalistic, you only think about reading, not concepts. Conceptually, most of these don’t work for the modern age. That’s why I started to switch their concepts to our age.
Mohsen Namjoo, “Iran’s Rebel Poet,” is based in the USA as he is unable to return and play his music in his native Iran. While on a European tour in 2009, Namjoo was sentenced to five years imprisonment for citing verses of the Koran with music. This is forbidden in Islamic law in Iran.
This is an interesting interview with SBS News.
The Other Sociologist 