We're putting out a Sholi 7"! YES!

January 11, 2008

We’re pleased to announce that we’ll shortly be releasing a fantastic 7″ from new San Francisco friends Sholi. Containing two precisely chosen covers — Iranian pop diva Googoosh’s “Hejrat” and Joanna Newsom’s “The Sprout and the Bean,” this release is truly special, and we are so stoked to be a part of it. Lead Sholi dude, Payam Bavafa, explains it better than I can:

“Googoosh was the most celebrated pop-singer of Iran during the 1970’s before the Islamic Revolution in 1979. After the revolution, most pop-music was banned from the country and she stopped singing entirely. Many Iranians fled to the United States and Europe, and Googoosh’s voice resonated as the soundtrack for their former lives in Iran before everything changed. The song “Hejrat” itself translates to “Migration”, and is commonly interpreted as a song of mourning for a lover that has departed. We hoped to reframe “Hejrat” as a medium for telling the story of Googoosh and other Iranian expatriates. As we explored the project and uncovered layers, we were surprised at the number of ways Googoosh’s tale was contrasted, mirrored, and amplified by themes embedded in Joanna Newsom’s deeply moving “The Sprout and the Bean.” Both songs speak to a displacement, a search for place or identity, that could be interpreted at the individual or cultural level, and we find that the pairing ties two worlds together in a deeply moving way, at a time when political rhetoric unfortunately escalates to the opposite extreme.”

You can read a bit more on Sholi here, and pre-order the 7″ in the shop here.