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I'd like to do a brief thread on global pop music & questionable Euro/U.S. vinyl reissue labels.
One of my fave Iranian singers, the legendary Ramesh, passed away this week. She is beloved among Iranians despite keeping a very low post-1979 profile...
One of my fave Iranian singers, the legendary Ramesh, passed away this week. She is beloved among Iranians despite keeping a very low post-1979 profile...
Among Euro/U.S. record collectors & music fanatics her renown is more recent, tied to the wave of vinyl reissues of global pop on labels like Sublime Frequencies, Guerssen, etc. Here is her 2013 LP collection released by Pharaway Sounds (what a name for a label, right?)
Unlike most (though not all) pre-revolutionary Iranian pop stars, Ramesh performed & recorded exceedingly infrequently post-1979. As @nahid8 notes, she expressed solidarity for women who were disallowed from performing by the new gov't & is also said to have dealt w/ depression
She did, however, perform at least occasionally in the 1980s in the U.S., such as this truly brilliant performance from (probably) 1984 at Tehrangeles' premier nightclub, Cabaret Tehran:
From all accounts these concerts were VERY rare, & many fans indeed had no clue where Ramesh was in the 1st decade or more post-1979, leading to speculation on her health & well-being. She did eventually record a new album (Rumi the Beloved) in 2003 w/ Dariush & Faramarz Aslani.
But I wanna go back to the Pharaway Sounds reissue, which was seemingly written by someone (Angela Sawyer) who did only the most perfunctory research. She claims that Ramesh was allegedly stoned to death for homosexuality during the rev (!) & that no one had seen her since '79...
I'm happy that this LP reissue exists, bc it brings this brilliant performer to a new world of fans. But if you're going to make money or gain scene cred off of someone's music, the least you could do is get basic facts about their life and art correct.
This isn't a one-off issue either; many of these pricey boutique reissues of Iranian/Turkish/Arab/Afghan pop are full of crazy amounts of misinformation on the artists and/or problematic historical analysis. I assume the same is true w/ African, Asian, & Latin American music too.
After this reissue LP came out I was in Tehran hanging w/ a pal who has a mammoth collection of Iranian vinyl, tapes, CDs, ephemera, etc. He was agitated abt these liner notes. After some other bad PS reissue he'd gotten in touch to tell them he could help w/ info...no response.
Some of the mistakes in these notes could've been fixed with just a google search. The album Sawyer claims came out in 1979 came out in 2003! It's easy to find this information! It's just basic fact checking, people!
It's so gross! You profit from a woman's art, you clearly don't pay her (if you don't know she's alive, how could you), you repeat a salacious rumor emphasizing Iranian culture's apparent barbarism, you mangle her life story, and you don't even do the most basic due diligence.
ANYWAY, /end rant, let's listen to the tunes and remember the woman, her integrity, and her beautiful voice. Here's one of my favorite Ramesh tunes (complete w/ amazing 70s video):
This is the most recent concert footage I found online, apparently frm 2015. She announces she's going to sing "Roodkhuneha" & the crowd freaks. Her voice sounds absolutely amazing. It got hellllla dusty in this room as I listened just now I can't lie 
In the 1960s-1970s, Ramesh collaborated often w/ Fereydun Farrokhzad (brother of modernist poet Forough Farrokzhad). Several of these collaborations were used on classic Iranian film soundtracks. One of my fave of these collabs is "Afsoos" âÂ
