What is Persian electronic music?

The dastgah system: where Persian melodies come from

Persian art music is organised in dastgahs, a modal system standardised in the 19th century. A dastgah is a family of short melodic pieces called gushehs. A performer starts with an introductory gusheh and moves through others in the same family, each with its own mood.

Most scholars count seven main dastgahs: Shur, Mahur, Homayun, Segah, Chahargah, Rast-Panjgah, and Nava. Five more, Abu Ata, Dashti, Afshari, and Bayat-e Tork (all branches of Shur) and Bayat-e Esfahan (a branch of Homayun), are treated as avaz, sub systems. Counted together, that gives the 12 most commonly played. Shur and Mahur are often called the mothers of the system: most gushehs in Mahur sit close to the Western major scale, while Shur sits closer to the Phrygian mode.

The body of melodies that musicians learn by heart is called the radif. Its present form was codified in the 19th century, largely by Mirza Abdollah Farahani (1843 to 1918), and has changed little since. UNESCO added the radif of Iranian music to its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2009.

For a producer this matters because Persian melodies use intervals that fall between the notes of a Western keyboard. Hitting those notes, or choosing a sample that already carries them, is what makes a track sound Persian rather than just exotic.

Instruments and rhythm

The sounds most people recognise as Persian come from instruments like the santur (a hammered dulcimer), the tar and setar (long necked lutes), the kamancheh (a bowed fiddle), and percussion such as the tombak and the daf frame drum.

At weddings and parties the rhythm that gets people dancing is usually 6/8, a rolling triple feel that sits underneath a large part of Persian pop. Moving that groove onto a four to the floor or half time club beat, without losing its swing, is one of the core problems in Persian electronic production.

From Tehran pop to the diaspora

Persian pop grew in Iran in the decades before 1979. After the revolution, pop music was heavily restricted inside the country, and much of the industry moved abroad, with Los Angeles becoming its best known centre. That diaspora sound, built on synths, drum machines, and 6/8 grooves, is the direct ancestor of today's Persian remixes and party edits.

Producers in Europe, North America, and inside Iran now take the same melodies and vocals into house, techno, trap, and bass music. The result is played at Persian weddings and Nowruz parties as much as in clubs.

What is Persian dubstep?

Dubstep came out of South London in the early 2000s, growing from UK garage, dub, and Jamaican sound system culture. The term first appeared in 2001, and the London club night FWD>> and pirate station Rinse FM helped build the scene. Skream's Midnight Request Line (2005) is one of the tracks that took it to a wider audience.

Most dubstep runs at 138 to 142 BPM. The drums sit in a half time feel, with the snare on the third beat of the bar, so the music feels slower than the tempo suggests. That leaves a lot of room in the middle of the mix, and the genre fills it with heavy sub bass and sparse, syncopated percussion.

Persian dubstep keeps that structure and replaces the melodic and vocal layer with Persian material: a dastgah shaped lead, a Persian vocal hook, or the texture of a santur or tar, set against the bass and the drop. The challenge is balance. If the bass takes all the space, the Persian line disappears; if the melody takes over, it stops working as dubstep.

Arminful's original track DIV is built on this idea: Persian inspired melodies and traditional textures over heavy bass and dubstep drops. It is released on Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube, and listed with its release date on the music page of this site.

How it sounds in a DJ set

In a live set, Persian electronic music sits next to Persian classics, Persian remixes, and international club records. At a Persian or mixed wedding the 6/8 tracks fill the floor with older guests, while remixes and bass heavy edits carry the later part of the night. The skill is reading which of those the room needs, and moving between them without a hard break.