The award-winning Israeli-Persian singer returns with "Roya"
(fantasy in Farsi) an exhilarating blend of tradi-modern rhythms
and retro-Persian sonics. Recorded in secrecy in Istanbul with
her band from Tel Aviv and risk-defying Iranian musicians from
Tehran. A musical portal to a place of peace, joy and unfettered
freedom. The new third album from award-winning Israeli-
Persian singer Liraz is an invitation to dream. Anthems, love
ballads, glittery Middle Eastern dance tunes ... A collection of 11
tracks that enrich that signature blend of tradi-modern rhythms
and retro-Persian sonics, Roya ("fantasy" in Farsi) is music as a
magic portal, an arched gateway to a place of peace, joy and
unfettered, chador-waving freedom. Liraz and her Israeli sextet
(three women, three men) recorded Roya over ten days in
Istanbul, in a basement studio hidden from public view and
crackling with creativity. With them, on violin, viola and the tar,
the wasp-waisted wooden Iranian lute, were composers and
musicians from the Iranian capital, Tehran. The same clutch of
anonymous players who previously collaborated with Liraz
online, no questions asked, no faces shown, under the radar of
Tehran"s secret police, for her feted 2020 album, Zan. Players
who"d travelled undercover from Tehran to Istanbul to work
with Liraz and producer/multi- instrumentalist Uri Brauner Kinrot
in the flesh. "There is a passage connecting our tongue and
heart, sustaining the secrets of the world and soul," wrote Rumi,
the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language,
whose prose Liraz treasures. "As long as our tongue is locked
the channel is open/the moment our tongue unlocks the
passage will close."
Welt