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Two Voices Mahsa Vahdat and Ferhut Tunç This month we are offering a choice of CDs to our MOTM subscribers, two fine voices from Persian and Kurdish traditions. These recordings were donated by KKV in Norway, and we thank them for their support. Sign up for Music of the Month with a 20.00 monthly donation and you will get your choice.

Mahsa Vahdat A Cappella: The Sun Will Rise "My voice is my homeland. My body is my instrument. My songs are about freedom, love and longing. My work is to trust the moment and make it eternal. In the most passionate moments of my singing, I fly to the landscape of the Alborz Mountains. Wherever in the world I sing, the rays of their sun interweave with my breath.   Listen: "The scent of the earth" "Plea"     Sign up for Music of the Month for 20.00 each month Or get just The Sun Will Rise alone, for 21.00 including postage, world wide. The record is a pilgrimage to a beauty marked by stains of love and dreams. In old churches, castles and halls - in Van, Istanbul, Oslo, Wroclaw, Provence and Alhambra, Mahsa's voice fills rooms of hidden stories and mysteries. Her orchestra is just the echo from walls and vaults, floors and columns in the rooms she and her engineer and producer Erik Hillestad chose for recording. Mahsa found the needed inspiration from unspoken stories and layers of time, expressed through architecture and art, and through the patina left by time and by life itself. She wanted to go to similar places in Iran, but because she is not allowed to perform in public places there, she had to record in other countries. During this journey, Mahsa’s emotional moods would receive suggestions for which songs to sing from the walls, windows and bricks, and even from the scent of the rooms where the recordings took place. In some cases there were also people present in the recording sessions, so it became like a live performance for a limited audience. In other places, the presence of birds, footsteps, bells, distant voices, brooks and fountains became natural elements of the flow of music. She recorded around 50 songs, and 21 of them were selected for the new album

Ferhat Tunç Kobani Ferhat Tunç was born in the place where the sun is blessed,the place where the fire is not extinguished with water the place where the face of earth is the face of God,the place where the mountain, stones, and sky are alive. He was born in Dersim, with a a history of resistance and uprising against opression as well as a history of massacres and exile. Thus, mourning and sadness have both accompanied and fostered Dersim. If one listens to mountains, waters, and lakes facing the sky, their klams (songs) are heard. Ferhat heard those songs and whispers. He then decided to express those songs and whispers. Listen: "Ömrüm Benim (My Life)" "Naro Can" "Ali Ismail"   Sign up for Music of the Month for 20.00 each month Or get just Kobani for 21.00 including postage, world wide. Ferhat Tunç is the kind of singer, rare in today's popular data stream, who must bear witness to the politics of his art in everyday life. Despite having been persecuted, sentenced, and jailed for his sonic activism, if not also because of the infractions inflicted upon him by his own government, Tunç has persevered in focusing his attention on those who have, less fortunately, paid with their lives. Recorded in Istanbul and Oslo, and mixed at the latter city's famed Rainbow Studio by master engineer Jan Erik Kongshaug, Kobani is Tunç's deepest mission statement yet. As the booklet explains, "he shows his solidarity with Kurds, Alevis, Yazidies and Armenians, by writing and performing songs about their stories, their suffering and pain, their hopes and the richness they bring to Anatolia and Mesopotamia." - From Tyran Grillo's review in RootsWorld