Frequent Questions & Misconceptions

  • I do not. This misconception comes from the face that some of the songs I post are titled “epic music.”

    “Epic music” as a term has been entirely colonised by the trailer-music, orchestral soundscape genre. Therefore, when I post music titled “Epic Byzantine,” or “Epic Iranian,” people assume I must be making cinematic soundscapes with epic orchestration, that happen to have historical themes.

    My colleagues and I make “epic music” in the original sense of the word: authentic traditional music of cultures about their epic repertoires of myths, legends, folklore, and great stories.

    Our work has nothing to do with cinematic, trailer-music style compositions, and instead deals in culturally grounded ethnic music from around the world, rooted in anthropology, rather than cinematic-language stylisations. The pieces we post, such as the Epic Byzantine pieces, absolutely prioritise authenticity and accuracy whilst rejecting the cinematic “epic” sound.

  • Not really, I am primarily a musicologist and researcher whose work is entirely rooted in showcasing musical traditions as they exist. The work I post is created by dozens upon dozens of collaborators who make it possible. Modern culture has difficulty imagining the process of music as anything other than “great composer artist writes music in his style and vision.” This is due to the cult of the authorial artist that arose in Western Romanticism in the 19th century.

    The only compositions that can truly be called my own, are the Iranian and French-adjacent ones, as those are the cultures I belong to. For most other cultures, I stick very closely to pre-existing melodic material, and mostly produce the songs whilst leaving the performance and composition details to the musicians of that tradition.

    My work is not a portfolio of “my compositions in my artistic vision,” but me simply leading an ethnomusicological project where we let the sounds of other traditions, as they are, speak for themselves.

    Whilst some part of my work absolutely involves me creating my own compositions in the authentic styles of certain cultures I belong to, such as Iranian music, French, or Québecois music, I am not primarily a composer, but a researcher.

  • Absolutely not. This is merely a project that I lead and finance. But the work attached to my name is the collective sweat and tears of dozens upon dozens of specialists, colleagues, and musicians who play their instruments, and bring their expertise and knowledge.

    If people enjoy the music I post, they must not imagine it’s all up to me. We are a team of collaborators.

  • I am an ethnic Mazandarani Iranian who was born and grew up in Iran. I then moved to France and then Canada, where I currently reside.