The first issue of Sedākhāne Report will be published soon
Sedākhāne Report is the name of Sedākhāne’s magazine, published quarterly on Sedakhane’s website as well as on paper. The first issue of this publication, titled The Boulevard of United Cities is devoted to the index of the 45-rpm records of the Azerbaijani Turkish music in Iran. The depth and breadth of this index will appeal to a wide range of enthusiasts including researchers and cultural critics. A major part of this issue is dedicated to the digitization of the record covers and labels on which numerous names of musicians along with their promotional images, names of record company owners, names of commercial labels and factories as well as addresses of music stores, etc. appear.
Two music albums made from the selection of these records, published between the 1950s and 1970s accompany the first issue. The pieces of these two music albums have been chosen in such a way that they show the stylistic and auditory range of the 45-rpm records’ long index of the Azerbaijani Turkish music in Iran, including Ashiqi music, Azerbaijani classical music, popular music, Motrebi music, pieces based on satirical poems, Arabic-style cabaret music, pieces close to Kurdish and Armenian music, etc.
In addition to the index of records, the focus and heart of this issue is the article titled, “A Brief Account of the Establishment of the Music Production Industry in Iran; the Record Industry and its Relation to Folk Music”, which is the first coherent extract of the history of the record industry in Iran. In this article, an attempt is made to present an understandable narrative of the growth of the music production relations in Iran by combining the general knowledge with the specialized one in the field of the record industry history. Moreover, this article seeks to go beyond the Tehran-centered narratives in order to achieve a broader and more exciting relationship between the record industry, Iran’s geography, and folk music. The aim of the article is to follow the history of the growth of an industry in Iran and the connection it has had with people’s lives in different cities. Obtaining the historical development of this narrative is the result of years of research conducted by Ahmad Jafari (Sedākhāne Report’s editor in chief and ethnomusicology graduate from Tehran University of Art) on the subject of the record industry in Iran. This chronological article begins with the arrival of European record companies in Tehran during the constitutional era (1990s) and continues until the spread of cassette tapes in the middle of the 2000s.
The title of this issue, The Boulevard of United Cities is an adaptation of the “United Nations Street” in Tabriz which used to be the hub of recording, duplicating, and distributing music, as well as the center of interaction between the people and tape stores when cassette tapes became trendy. The main hangout of musicians and especially Ashiqis was the tape stores and coffee houses of this street.
All the texts in this issue have been translated into Turkish, Arabic, and English in the hope of relating to similar ideas and concerns in a wider geography.
The pre-sale of the first issue will start soon on the website.
