Still missing homeland, Iranian singer Sadegh Nojouki forges career in U.S.

When Sadegh Nojouki fled Tehran for California in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, he assumed he’d be back home before long.

At 29, he’d already established himself as an innovative force in Persian pop music, known for composing songs with sumptuous string arrangements for Iran’s most famous vocalists. It took several years before the realization set in that the regime had slammed shut the door to his musical calling for the foreseeable future.

“I was super homesick,” Nojouki said of his first years in San Diego. “Every day it was worse and worse. In Iran I was very successful. Here I was nobody. It was super hard because Iranians were not gathered in a special place. They were not close to each other.”

On Saturday, Diaspora Arts Connection presents Yalda, a nostalgic production featuring Nojouki and various vocalists at the Montgomery Theater presenting the songs that served as a balm for a community similarly longing for home.

As the exiled Iranian music scene came to reside in Los Angeles, where Nojouki settled in the early 1980s, he gradually found his voice again. Or make that voices, as he became the collaborator of choice for a brilliant constellation of Persian pop stars (who are mostly known by a single moniker), including Googoosh, Hayedeh, Sattar, Homeyra, Mahasti, Ebi, Moein, Dariush, Omid, Martik and Vigen.

A master of blending classical Persian melodies with Western orchestration, Nojouki tailored his arrangements to the particular contours of a singer’s sound. “You cannot compare Celine Dion with Barbra Streisand,” he said. “They’re all great, and I composed for the flavor of each of them. The songs I composed for Ebi are totally different than for Dariush. That’s an art that nobody taught me. Quincy Jones said the songs we write come from another world.”

By the time Nojouki hit his creative stride in L.A. his homeland had become another world. Music and dancing were banned. Assemblies where men and women mixed freely were illegal. Private parties and assemblies were raided, and women were forced to cover their hair with a hijab (laws that are once again being challenged by youth and millennials). The brutal, decade-long Iran-Iraq War, which raged throughout the ‘80s, cast a further pall over Iranian society.

Often referred to within the community as “Los Angeles Iranian music,” songs recorded by Nojouki and other exiled Iranian composers in the 1980s and ‘90s resonated far beyond the Southland. While the theocratic government sought to stamp out secular arts, the songs were “smuggled into Iran as a contraband, and then went to all Iranian homes where it was played in private gatherings, giving people joy amidst so much uncertainty and sadness,” said Nazy Kaviani, the Iranian exile who founded and directs Diaspora Arts Connection.

“People fell in love with this music, danced in their secret wedding parties to it, and enjoyed knowing that there were people outside of Iran writing music for their moods and needs,” she said.

The Pleasant Hill-based arts organization’s flagship event is the annual “Let Her Sing” showcase, which presents an array of female vocalists from countries where women’s voices are suppressed by law or custom. Kaviani’s year-round programming focuses on Iranian artists, though Yalda is something of a departure.

Featuring Nojouki on piano and keyboard, the production looks back and celebrates the Los Angeles Iranian music scene, which was coaxed out of foreign soil with limited resources. Nojouki often recorded sessions with a full orchestra In Iran. “I had to do the same job with three violins and overdubs” for L.A. sessions, he said. “Looking back, I don’t know how I did it.”

It’s an era conjured in the new book by Iran’s foremost pop icon, “Googoosh: A Sinful Voice,” a bracing account of her experience of exile. With Yalda, Nojouki revisits past triumphs while inviting audiences to immerse themselves in the sounds of a home away from home.

“We really wanted to pay tribute to the original group of Iranian artists who came here and worked amidst so much adversity, without much support,” Kaviani said. “At 75, Nojouki is active and energetic, still interested to take to stage.”

It may have taken him a while, but eventually he came to realize that he’d put down roots in a new land. His children were American born, “and I’m a proud American citizen,” he said, expressing deep gratitude for being welcomed by Americans. “We were hoping we’d come back, but after 10 years, that’s it, this is going to be my home.”

Contact Andrew Gilbert at jazzscribe@aol.com.

YALDA 

Featuring Sadegh Nojouki and other Iranian singers

When & where: 8 p.m. Dec. 20 at Montgomery Theater, San Jose; $50-$221; www.diasporaartsconnection.org