This Week in Sacramento, Bazm-e Khayyam

On Friday, October 9, at 7 p.m., Bazm-e Khayyam takes the stage at Melody Universe in Sacramento. All tickets for the program have been sold. Last week we gave a short notice of the evening, and this week we want to say what the audience will see and hear in the hall.

Bazm-e Khayyam is written and directed by Sadegh Hatefi. Hatefi and Manijeh Golchin both act on stage. Golchin also sings the pieces of the evening and arranged the music for the stage. A group of California musicians accompanies them. Mahan Nejad, Nima Hekmat, Kourosh Markazi, Azadeh Nemat-Gorgani and Salar are the other artists of the evening.

The program enters Khayyam's world with a three-minute short film made by Rokhand Gharavi.

Act One turns to Khayyam himself. Here we meet the climate of his thoughts and moods, and the questions that have risen from his quatrains for centuries. Arrival and departure, the passing of time, the impermanence of the world, and the value of the present moment. This part is accompanied by poetry reading, and the quatrains are recited there, on stage.

Act One ends with a Bushehri Khayyam-khani. Khayyam-khani is one of the musical traditions of Bushehr, on Iran's southern coast, in which Khayyam's quatrains are sung at evening gatherings and among friends, with the company joining in. This ending shows that Khayyam's poetry did not stay in books and has lived for centuries in people's lives and in their music.

Part Two comes from the past to the present. Here we travel with Khayyam to see what mark his works and his outlook have left on contemporary Persian songs. His thought can be heard in many of the songs that recent generations have lived with, even where his name is never mentioned. The program then continues with these contemporary songs, and the evening ends in music.

In this way Bazm-e Khayyam travels from the old poetry to the songs of today. From film to poetry, from poetry to the singing of the people of the south, and from there to the songs most of us know by heart.

We thank everyone who has bought a ticket, and we look forward to seeing you on Friday night at Melody Universe.