Simâ Binâ

The career of Iranian songstress Sima Bina can be divided into two distinct phrases: a child prodigy who hosted her own radio show, Golhayeh Sahraie (Wild Flowers), and a teenager who initially focused on the classical music tradition of her homeland. Forced from the stage by the political crisis that struck Iran in 1979 and the enactment of a law prohibiting women from singing, Bina became a collector of Khorassan and Persian folk songs and began composing her own songs with poet Mohammed Ebrahim Djafari and dotar player Hamid Khezri. Despite her shift in repertoire, Bina con...