Azam Ali has one of the most distinctive voices in world music—haunting, ancient-sounding, and gorgeously dark. But it was never the Iranian-born artist’s intention to become a singer. As an 18-year-old immigrant growing up in Los Angeles, Ali began exploring her Persian and Middle Eastern musical roots through an instrument.
“I wanted to play something exotic, and I discovered the santur [a hammered dulcimer] and found a great Persian classical master here,” says Ali, reached on her cellphone in Anaheim, California, where her young son Iman has taken her to Disneyland on a tour stop. “It was three or four years into my studies with him that, in order to learn certain passages, I had to be able to sing some of the poetry that was in there. He asked if I’d ever considered pursuing singing. He said, ‘It’s not just about being a good singer. There’s one quality that, no matter how good you get technically, you’re either born with or you’re not. That’s the ability to really connect with people emotionally, and I hear it in your voice.’
“I trusted him,” she continues. “He was a father figure in my life, and so I took a beginner’s voice course in college, and at the end of the semester my teacher offered me private lessons, so I studied with him. And once I started I felt suddenly able to tap into an emotional dimension that I couldn’t as an instrumentalist, and it became my main form of expression.”
Ali brings to her uniquely evocative way of singing a wealth of knowledge of Persian classical music, Iranian folk song, a range of Middle Eastern and South Asian traditions, and western music from medieval chants to contemporary rock. In 2004 she formed the trio Niyaz with her husband, multi-instrumentalist Loga Ramin Torkian, and programming ace Carmen Rizzo.
The group’s 2008 double album, Nine Heavens, which featured both acoustic and electronic versions of each song, proved a worldwide critical success. Earlier this year, Ali released her third recording, From Night to the Edge of Day, under her own name. When she sings in Vancouver, accompanied by Torkian and three other musicians, half of the material will come from Niyaz albums past and future, the rest from her solo album.
“I wanted to do something for my son and it’s dedicated to him,” says Ali, who confesses to being semi-nomadic and currently resides in Montreal. “Even though I’ve been an immigrant my whole life, when he was born I felt it more than at any other time. It made me reflect on all the children in the world who are born in diasporas, as a result of social and political conflicts. Instead of being depressed by this—that my son would never really know where he came from—I decided that the best thing I can do is to create something for him that will always be there.”
From Night to the Edge of Day is an album of lullabies unlike any you’ve heard before, and Ali has been exploring their shadow side. “I looked at lullabies from all over the world, and there’s a common thread that runs through all of them—that is, in general they tend to be very dark in nature. It’s my interpretation that this is because, when your child comes into the world, there’s a tremendous sense of responsibility that you feel and the overwhelming sense that you want to protect them from everything. Knowing you’re not going to be able to, it’s indescribable.”
09/21/11 >> 
