MISSISSIPPI RECORDS NEWSLETTER VOL. 22:

In this edition
- Release events for our newest record, the soundtrack to lost Iranian masterpiece Chess of the Wind
- Interview with musician Mani Nilchiani
- Sun Ra Birthday Shout
- And more….

Hello,

I recently took two back-to-back trips. The first was to Portland, the Mississippi nerve center, to visit the shop (hi Eric, Frankie, Karen, Aaron, Nick!). We spent the day with Toody Cole at the House Dead Moon Built on the wooly outskirts of the city, and basked in the glow of the world she created with Fred. Dead Moon is the creative and spiritual epicenter of the label - art inseparable from life, made with kindness, intention, humor, and no (or at least just a few, strategic) compromises. Lukewarm Bud Light and a life lived right. Something to aspire to.

From the heavily armed woodlands of rural Oregon, I traveled to Turkey to meet up with my extended family, who flew in from Iran. In the seaside town of Bodrum, once the ancient city of Halikarnassos, now a resort town for sanctioned Russians, I shared with my family a copy of our upcoming record, the soundtrack to the banned 1976 Iranian film masterpiece “Chess of the Wind.” My cousins, a few years older and big influences in my life, have always been into our work at Mississippi, if slightly bemused (“Ethiopian piano playing nun??”). But as they unwrapped this record, saw the Farsi text, thumbed through the giant booklet, I got my first genuine “wow.”  They’d seen some of the iconic screengrabs from the film, and my cinephile cousin was familiar with the story, but they didn’t know there was a restored version (from Marty Scorsese!), or that people in the US and Europe were watching it, or that their weird little cousin was working on the soundtrack.

It’s dark days for people in Iran right now (as it is in Palestine, Sudan, Congo, and many places closer to home for that matter). In some ways it feels silly or small to come through clutching these recorded totem objects, to spend so much time and energy on records, of all things. But as artist Mani Nilchiani describes below, these works are prophetic, and they have political power. If not, why would this movie be banned by two successive regimes in Iran? We’ll keep these vital messages circulating - not as fetishized objects of a long-gone past, or art pieces carved out from daily life, but as a shared language, carried on in conversation with contemporary artists and the world’s they inhabit now, from Toody to Tehran.

So we’re really pumped for this record, and honored to work with the visionary artists Mohammad Reza Aslani and Sheida Gharechedaghi, with scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani, and with the badass Criterion Collection, to bring this music to light after 50 years, and to finally impress my cousins. 

Please join us for screenings of “Chess of the Wind” in New York, DC, and Portland, as well as a bunch of other in-person events coming up soon. A million thanks for listening and for showing up. 

All praise to the fog, 

Cyrus and Mississippi Records

The soundtrack to “Chess of the Wind,” Iran’s 1976 queer-gothic-class-horror masterpiece, restored by the director and released for the first time. Not for the faint of heart!!!!

A masterpiece of world cinema, Mohammad Reza Aslani’s “Chess of the Wind” was banned in Iran and thought to be lost until a complete print of the film re-emerged in an antique shop in 2014. Restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and released to rapturous reviews in 2020, “Chess of the Wind” has taken its rightful place as one of the most visionary and daring films of pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema.

The film’s soundtrack, by one of the nation’s most revered female composers, Sheida Gharachedaghi, is just as daring - a combination of Persian classical instrumentation and atonal dissonance drawn from her Western conservatory background. Woodwinds, traditional Persian percussion, and the eerie moan of the ancient sheypour horn reflect the film’s battle between feudalism and modernity. As one scholar said, it sounds like “Ornette Coleman visiting a holy shrine in Iran.”

For this release, the director and composer worked with film scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani to reimagine and restore the music, combining it with work from another (as yet unreleased) Aslani/Gharachedaghi project “Therefore Hangs A Tale.” The result is two side-length sound collages, a new work birthed from the film, one that Aslani has long dreamt of creating. 

The work is a legible sonic journey that speaks to the film’s feminist themes, tracing a long battle for freedom in Iran from the early 20th century through today’s Women Life Freedom Movement.

Mississippi is proud to release a major work by two of Iran’s most daring yet overlooked artists.

The release comes with 8 full-size pages of liner notes and stills from the film, including song translations and an in-depth history by scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani. First edition of 2000 copies, in black or amber-colored vinyl.

Mani Nilchiani is a New York-based musician by way of Tehran. In his music, he uses elements of Iranian classical music to retrace, explore, and retell a story of displacement while researching future-facing sonic spaces. He is the co-founder of the cultural platform Disco Tehran, which he co-led until 2023.

Mani is also a dear friend of the label and will be performing before the New York screening of Chess of the Wind on June 7 at Anthology Film Archives. Mississippi’s own Maria Barrios got with Mani to talk about Iranian classical music, Chess of the Wind, and how his own work falls into this continuum of radical experimentation within ancient musical forms.

Maria Barrios: I wanted to start by asking about your background and music.

Mani Nilchiani: In my music, I explore the intersection of Iranian classical music with various forms of contemporary and personal expression. My music draws a lot from the notions of displacement, the constant kind of yearning, seeking for home, and different elements of that. And in doing that, I tap into Iranian classical and folk music. I also work with sound language in different formats to give it the expression that I want, which is not always something I know; I figure out what I want as I go, in the process of art making.

MB: Did you grow up in the US?

MN: No, I was born and raised in Tehran, the capital of Iran. I lived there until I was 23 then moved to the US. Since 2020, I've been splitting my time between Mexico City and New York. So I live between the two places.

MB: Why did you leave Tehran?

MN: I came here with a student visa. And then one thing led to another and I ended up with a US passport. It took a very long time.  I find that every Iranian outside the country has doubts about safety and the potential issues of going back, which show up as internalized oppressions that we keep reproducing in ourselves. There's usually this notion of “Will I be okay if I go back?” And the answer is, “Probably.” But every Iranian I know is dealing with that internal question. In a way, being outside of Iran always becomes political in some shape or form, regardless of your choices. But yeah, my reasons have been entirely, “Oh, let's go get a degree and then see what happens.” So now I'm here.

MB: Can you tell me more about Iranian classical music?

MN: When we talk about classical music in Iran, we're talking about a very complex and beautiful intertwined system of seven main modalities and five subsidiary modes. There are a lot of modulations that happen in each mode, these are called Dastgāh (“dast” means hand, and “gāh” is a suffix for place and time). So, it means the way you place your hands on a flute or a string instrument.

So you are learning and playing in one particular mode, and then you go to a different mode. These modes are very well structured, you can think of it as a series of staircases in an architecture that takes you from one room to another room, and then one of those rooms might have a back door that leads you to a different staircase that takes you elsewhere. Through years of cultivation and deep work and familiarizing yourself, not with only the techniques, but also with the theory and practice, you kind of get a blueprint of this beautiful house that you can navigate through. Now, once you learn all these pieces, which I think are maybe around 300 (each might be falling in one of these different modalities or staircases and rooms) then you're equipped with the vocabulary to improvise and compose.

This is a newer development in the way that Iranian classical music is taught. 100 years ago, students wouldn’t meet their teacher with a book, read, and then practice, it was very much an oral tradition. So this has been the music of the people and the way that people use music to express themselves, primarily for particular rituals, like a birthday, or when somebody passes away, or a wedding, etc. But if you look at each region in Iran, you'll find that particular modalities are practiced more than others—and if you can trace them, you will see that they, in fact, for the most part, do end up in this consolidated body of Iranian classical music. So there's a very deep connection between folk and regional music in Iran and Iranian classical music. 

MB: Can you tell me about how you approach Iranian classical music in your work?

MN: This is a very well-formulated type of music and there's usually a very particular set of mannerisms and approaches that exists to playing it. It takes a very particular character to be the maestro kind of persona who composes and plays this kind of music. As such, at least in Iran, there also exists a somewhat rigid worldview attached to it, because it comes from a space of preservation, right? Let's make sure no deviation comes in here because a lot of work, blood, and sweat has gone into preserving this valuable tradition. But then my thinking was, how can I use this as a point of departure to go out and explore what other expressions I might find?

Going back to this kind of analogy of architecture, the more you study it, the more you realize that, yes, you can innovate, but you can't have a toilet in the kitchen. What that means is that the phrasing, the tonalities, and the modulations need to follow the patterns that invisibly exist in the body of Iranian classical music repertoire. But once you are loyal to that, and you're using those kinds of architectural standards, then I think anything beyond that, in my book, you're permitted to go out and innovate based on that.

I think that it is possible to safeguard and nurture this long-existing tradition that has a very long and beautiful lineage while at the same time — being loyal to the underlying structures of that tradition —  we should feel free to find our expression in there. I believe that if I'm sitting here in New York City, if I'm living and breathing this era, if I'm in my social circles and communities, and if the big questions of humanity at this point in time have changed, I should allow that to inform the message and how that might change the medium itself while being rooted in the structure that exists inherently in Iranian classical music. So that's the kind of openness that I'm trying to cultivate.

MB: Tell us about your relationship with “Chess of the Wind.” Did you know it beforehand? Is it known in Iran? What did you think when you saw the film?

MN: I did see the film when it premiered at Film Forum in New York. I went with my partner and we liked it so much that my parents were visiting, and we took them to see the film too. They knew all the actors. I don't know if it's well-known in Iran. When I talk to my friends here, I find that unless they are cinephiles, they haven't heard of it.

I remember that my first impression was that this was so prophetic. As we watched it, it felt like we saw the contemporary history of Iran unfold in front of our eyes.

I think everything in the film happens on at least two levels that might point to the gender divide, the class divide, social divides, geographic and timeline divide, as you're kind of zoomed in to this very hierarchical family structure in this old money feudalist kind of home. As you zoom out, you see the contemporary 70s Iran and the juxtaposition between those and all the relationships that exist.

There is an element of music that also carries the same kind of juxtaposition; there's the music of the people that's played, that shows up in the courtyard with the blind musicians sitting. They are quite literally looked down upon by the rich characters sitting on the balcony upstairs.

What they are playing is a very folk expression that's rooted in Iranian classical music, the mode they are playing is called Chahārgāh. It is one of the most emblematic modes of Iranian classical music. So it has a very wide range of expression that you can't find necessarily in other modes of Iranian classical music, yet, it's looked down upon because it's being performed by the common folk.

MB: What did you think of the film’s soundtrack?

MN: There's this kind of Stravinsky sound that shows up with lots of horns, that's kind of modern/contemporary and keeps you on the edge of your seat. It tells you of this kind of imminent, radical change that is coming, and it's going to be very unsettling. Or some shit is about to be turned upside down. And again, that also kind of points to the prophetic nature of the film. When I saw it for the first time, it was as if someone was seeing the future, and making this film to tell us about what's about to come our way.

When I was listening to those horn sections, I kept thinking “This reminds me of a sound that I've heard.” Then I went back, and I realized that in regional Iranian music, in the north of Iran, in the province of Gilan, there's this instrument called Karnay that is typically played in groups and it's used in a very ritualistic manner. It is an incredibly long-stemmed wind instrument with a curl at the very end. It’s so long that there's usually a person with a stick, standing at the very end of the instrument to hold it up. That was an interesting moment because it felt like, here's the new old, here comes a rebirth that has its roots in a very old folk tradition, but yet it sounds so contemporary.

MB: What do you think makes “Chess of the Wind” special?

MN: I think it's a revolutionary film without claiming that it's a revolutionary film. I think that it's about social unrest, upheaval, class struggle, and imminent change in social relations in a multitude of ways. There are many beautifully made films in Iran around the same era that are about revolution. But formally, they're also like super about the revolution. I don't think this one sets out to necessarily come across as such, at least the first layer that makes an impact on you. I don't think that it necessarily lands that way. But the deep long tail effect that leaves with you — especially after watching it a few times — for me it was that kind of revolutionary spirit. That's what made it very special for me.

Mani Nilchiani will be performing a live set at Chess of the Wind: The Lost Song of Freedom — an album release party presented by Mississippi Records and hosted by Anthology Film Archives in New York. Friday, June 07, 7:30 pm. 32 2nd Ave, New York, NY. Tickets here.

To celebrate the release of our new album, join us for a special screening of CHESS OF THE WIND, June 7 at Anthology Film Archives, NYC, in collaboration with Criterion Collection. 

We’ve spent the last year working closely with the film’s director, Iranian auteur Mohammad Reza Aslani, his daughter, Gita Aslani, and composer Sheida Gharachedaghi, to release the soundtrack to this massively original 1976 film (just don’t call it “New Wave”). 

Friday’s screening will be preceded by an intro about the 50-year-process of gestating and releasing this music, and a performance by Iranian musician and artist Mani Nilchiani. We’ll have advance copies of the record on hand, some screen-printed posters, and some handmade art editions. Afterward, we can head to Big Bar and argue about what the f*ck we just saw, in true Anthology fashion. 

We’ll have additional screenings in DC and Portland. Read below for more about the film/album, via Anthology….

Friday, June 7, 7:30 PM
RECORD RELEASE EVENT!
Chess of the Wind (screening + short performance and intro)
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave, New York, NY
TICKETS

This summer, Mississippi Records will release CHESS OF THE WIND, the soundtrack to Mohammad Reza Aslani’s 1976 film of the same time. A masterpiece of world cinema, Aslani’s CHESS OF THE WIND was banned in Iran and thought lost until a complete print of the film re-emerged in 2014. Restored by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation and released to rapturous reviews in 2020, CHESS OF THE WIND is a genre-breaking queer-class-horror in miniature, and one of the most visionary and daring films of pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema.

The film’s soundtrack, by one of Iran’s most revered avant-garde composers, Sheida Gharachedaghi, blends Persian classical instrumentation and atonal dissonance drawn from the composer’s Western-conservatory background. For the new Mississippi Records album, both Aslani and Gharachedaghi worked with film scholar Gita Aslani Shahrestani to revisit their score from fifty years ago and recombine its recorded elements into a new sonic work. The result is a cohesive sound collage tracing the history of the Women’s Rights Movement in Iran from 1905 to the present – a wholly new work that Aslani long dreamt of creating.

To celebrate the record’s release, Mississippi Records label head Cyrus Moussavi will be here in person to present the project and the process of working with the Aslani family, along with a screening of Aslani’s film, CHESS OF THE WIND.

The screening will be preceded by a short performance by Mani Nilchiani, who is a New York-based musician by way of Tehran. In his music, he uses elements of Iranian classical music (Radif) to retrace, explore, and retell a story of displacement while researching future-facing sonic spaces. The co-founder of the cultural platform Disco Tehran, which he co-led until 2023, Mani has performed in venues such as MoMA PS1, Public Records, Barbes, Symphony Space & DROM.

Mohammad Reza Aslani
CHESS OF THE WIND / SHATRANJ-E BAAD
1976, 98 min, 35mm-to-DCP. In Farsi with English subtitles. Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Image Retrouvée laboratory (Paris) in collaboration with Mohammad Reza Aslani and Gita Aslani Shahrestani. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
“This rediscovered jewel of Iranian cinema has reemerged as one of the most astonishing works of the country’s prerevolutionary New Wave. A hypnotically stylized murder mystery awash in period atmosphere, CHESS OF THE WIND unfolds inside a candlelit mansion, where a web of greed, violence, and betrayal ensnares potential heirs as they vie for control of their matriarch’s estate. Melding the influences of European modernism, gothic horror, and classical Persian art, Mohammad Reza Aslani crafts an exquisitely restrained mood piece that erupts into a subversive final act in which class conventions, gender roles, and time itself are upended with shocking ferocity.”– CRITERION COLLECTION