Boston Globe, Washington, October 16, 2010- Marzieh, a celebrated interpreter of traditional Persian music whose career in her native Iran was silenced by the clerical dictatorship and who in exile became a sharp voice of political dissent, died of cancer Oct. 13 at a hospital in Paris. She was 86.
The daughter of a moderate cleric, Marzieh became known through concerts, radio, and records from the 1940s onward.
She remained a captivating entertainer through recent years, with a mesmerizing voice that for her most devoted fans reinvigorated a sense of nostalgia for the monarchist era. She boasted a repertoire of 1,000 songs.
Ahmad Karimi-Hakkak of the University of Maryland said Marzieh cultivated a lyrical style with “really sinuous, winding tones, notes, and melodies.’’
She was especially noted for songs that came to be known as Tableaux Musicale, which presented metaphoric vignettes of love and helped popularize classical Persian lyrical poetry.
Marzieh, who was born Ashraf os-Sadat Morteza’i in Tehran, performed before the Iranian royal family.
Other highlights of her career included a performance in Iran for Queen Elizabeth II and in Washington for President Nixon.
Her career was effectively ended after the shah was overthrown in 1979. Solo female voices were prohibited on radio.
For 15 years she kept her voice trained but did not perform publicly. She described herself as devastated emotionally.
In 1994, on a visit to Paris, she defected. Subsequent concert dates at such venues as London’s Royal Albert Hall and the Olympia in Paris blended entertainment and political messages.
“I sing mostly love songs,’’ she told the Chicago Tribune in 1995. “Love is incarcerated and killed in Iran.’’
The singer said the National Council of Resistance of Iran allowed her to recapture a sense of dignity. “I used to go to the countryside and sing to the mountains, the birds, for the water, for the hills, just to avoid my voice reaching one mullah,’’ she told an interviewer in 1999.
“They said music was only for the wicked. I was becoming a pale autumn leaf. If I had not come to Paris and met them, what would have happened to me? What would a nightingale do if you put her in a cage? She would die in 24 hours.’’