Part 1
Name: ZÖJ
Members: Gelareh Pour (kamancheh), Brian O’Dwyer (drums)
Interviewee: Gelareh Pour
Nationalities: Iranian-Australian (Gelareh), Australian (Brian)
Current release: ZÖJ's Fil O Fenjoon is slated for release in November of 2023 via Bleeemo and Parenthèses (outside Australia).
Recommendations: I absolutely adore and am inspired by ‘Indian Love Song’ by Dirty Three. This song brings so much joy and anger to me. This is a strange combination of emotions.
I also really love ‘Ascending Bird’ by my hero, Kayhan Kalhor from the beautiful Silent City album. Listen to this piece, watch its live video on YouTube and then read about it. I’ll leave you with that.
If you enjoyed this ZÖJ interview and would like to stay up to date with the band and their music, visit the Gelareh Pour's homepage or the bandcamp page of Bleeemo, Brian's label. ZÖJ also has a dedicated Facebook page.
[Read our Brian O'Dwyer interview]
When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening? Do you listen with your eyes open or closed?
Music is everywhere for me.
When I engage with a piece of music, I often find myself listening to everything a little too carefully, I have to focus to stop hearing all the noises and other sounds around me. It feels like floating, toward eternity. Music moves through time, shape, and place. It’s like a connection between me and different feelings or places. I feel light, centred, and free.
My eyes can be open or shut but my mind and soul always seem to be somewhere else. I don’t get this feeling from all music, but definitely from music I love.
What were your very first steps in music like and how would you rate the gains made through experience - can one train/learn being an artist?
My first introduction to music was through my family, especially my dad. My auntie used to play Santur at family gatherings and my uncle would always play Tombak with her.
Dad would take me to Classical Persian concerts and regularly played Classical Persian and European, orchestral music for us. We weren’t encouraged to listen to pop songs, and I didn’t really do this until around the age of 14. Even then I really only heard pop music at friend’s houses. This shaped my taste in music a lot. I had gradually begun to listen to different genres, but never really got into things like jazz, electronic or punk music until moving to Australia.
At the age of 7, I made a friend at primary school who was learning piano, and this was the first spark for me to learn music. I encouraged my family to enrol me into music school. I can’t remember ever having insisted on anything like that before. My family ended up enrolling myself, my siblings, and cousins to music school. Because of my age, my classes started later than them, but in the end, I was the only one who stuck around and continued playing and leaning professionally.
I started getting into metal music when I was 16, but my love for Classical Persian music and perhaps my fear or uncertainty about playing anything else, kept me in that field for both singing and playing my instruments, Persian Kamancheh and Qeychak.
Before moving to Australia, I was listening to music and playing it by the book, but after leaving Iran and starting my musical career in Australia, my whole perspective towards music and creation changed. I learnt how to listen more deeply, how to discover myself, and I dared to feed the desire of being free and experimental.
According to scientific studies, we make our deepest and most incisive musical experiences between the ages of 13-16. What did music mean to you at that age and what’s changed since then?
As I mentioned, my first interaction with music was through my dad. He has a beautiful voice and I remember he used to sing me a song that was always making me cry. Whenever he was trying to tease me, he would sing that song. I remember how much I used to try to stop that feeling but it was impossible, the music was infectious.
I attended so many live concerts from a young age, but around the age of 12-13 I ended up being in a room with my mum’s friend who was a pianist. This was the first time I had been that close to a piano. I remember she started playing a classical Persian piece on the piano and I remember the rush of tears to my eyes. I remember how warm my heart was in the moment. It was like my dad’s voice. I could not control myself. This reaction seemed to happen for a little while when I was listening to piano from close proximity. It took me a while to get over it, like my dad’s voice.
I’m not sure what was causing this reaction, but I remember being at singing classes with two other classmates who were twins, a boy and a girl. I remember that every time the boy was singing, the girl would cry. Was it love? Was it raw emotion? Was it sadness? Whatever it was, music was the biggest part of it.
Music has always been very emotional for me. I sometimes make myself cry. Even when I got into heavy metal music around the age of 16, I’d cry with ‘Nothing Else Matters’ by Metallica. I would turn the music right up, cry and sing along.
And now at the age of 38, I’d do the same with Warren Ellis’s vocals on ‘Bright Horses’. Some things just touch my eyes.
What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and what motivates you to create?
Life stories, poetry, nature, music and life are the key ideas behind me creating music. Places, buildings and people also help shape my ideas and motivate me.
My biggest inspiration with ZÖJ is Brian, he’s my most critical listener and I trust him the most. When I play, all I want is to impress him. I don’t know why that fulfils me so much. I love the way Brian listens to me, reflects and reacts.
When I see the moon, the horizon and the movement of leaves in the wind, all I hear is music and inspiration to create.
To quote a question by the great Bruce Duffie: When you come up with a musical idea, have you created the idea or have you discovered the idea?
Most of my compositions are based on improvisation but most of the time I only create a structure that ideas can dance around. Especially in ZÖJ,
I’d say I both create and discover, and this is the best and most exciting way of performing for me. When we play live, we already have created the structure and with the help of the location and people (audience) we discover the rest.
I always call it the triangle of creation in ZÖJ.
Paul Simon said “the way that I listen to my own records is not for the chords or the lyrics - my first impression is of the overall sound.” What's your own take on that and how would you define your personal sound?
I love this statement. I definitely go for the overall sound.
It’s so easy to get caught in detail, in every note, in every word and in rhythm, but it’s so much more attractive for me to look at a piece of music or a record as a whole. To understand the feelings, the location, the movements, and stories. Sometimes I love every track of an album and sometimes not, but when I replay my favourite tracks of certain albums, I usually know what comes before and after them. I imagine the overall sound of the album and hear the track within it.
For my sound also, the most important thing for me is feeling and location of everything I record. That’s why studios are my least favourite locations to document sounds. I like to spend time in different places, to pick an amazing building somewhere, eat food in those areas, meet new people and record and create those feelings and sounds over a few days. This way I have opportunity to develop a unique overall sound that I always reconnect with when I listen back.
Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds? In how far would you describe them as “musical”?
For me, the music of nature is not only sound; it is also movement, light, colour, smell, texture, and temperature. The most powerful and inspiring sound in nature for me is its deep silence and stillness.
To this day, the most powerful sound in nature for me is the stillness of snow fall. This silence has been my most favourite sound since I was a child. I’d lay on mountains of snow in northern Tehran, gaze into the sky and let the snow lay on my skin. Everything covered in snow, quiet but alive, like a big orchestra playing the most beautiful song, in pianississimo.
The funny thing is, although Iran has one of the most beautiful forests, seas and nature, I have hardly been connected to it as I grew up in the city of Tehran and had only been exposed to pure nature during our holidays in the Shemshak mountains and Caspian sea. Since moving to Australia, I’ve been exposed to its wild, humble and giving land and vegetation. This has been one of the most inspiring parts of living in Australia for me.
I have planted more trees on this land than anywhere else. The shapes, the forms, the growth, the forgiveness, the consistency and progression of nature and especially my own garden, is one of the most important inspirations for me in making music.
