Updated 4 months ago
2023 Update: New documentary!
Now we know what the creators of Fyre Festival were thinking as they finished their last 8 ball.
The Shah was a worldly man of culture, proud of Persia, disdainful of religious fanatics, and an exquisite taste in avant garde music. A Persian Ataturk, or Franco. And, unfortunately, a ruthless, murdering tyrant.
“‘Xenakis’ as a piece was not meant to be played by a traditional musical ensemble, arranging a multimedia spectacle staged in the dark of night all over the archeological site of the ancient city of Persepolis, using two lasers and ninety-two spotlights that projected patterns that evoked the Zoroastrian symbolism of light associated to eternal life. Fifty-nine loudspeakers projected, in turn, eight channels of sound throughout the audience, who, in the distance, could see bonfires burning and parades of children carrying torches over the hills, forming even more patterns, the most important of which was a message ‘written’ in Persian: “We bear the light of the earth”.
Ahura Mazda, the main deity of Zoroastrianism, is a wholly benevolent god, the author of all beauty and vitality, a god that wants humanity to participate with him in furthering creation towards perfection. This invitation comes with no strings attached – no punishment, no reward except that of a better world. Those who followed this call saw themselves as a free-willed brotherhood united in a cause alongside their god to transform the world; their prophet, called Zarathustra, extolled that “may we be among those who bring about the transfiguration of the earth.”
The Greek-French composer described Persepolis as “neither a work of theater, nor a ballet, nor an event. It is visual symbolism, paralleled in sound, and in the end it is sound –music—that must prevail at all costs.’ (David Murrieta)
A note on the composer. His left face is disfigured and he is missing an eye, eerily matching the dissonance of his music. How did this happen?
In 1945 after the Germans left Athens Greece, “Xenakis joins the student battalion of the ELAS (National Popular Army) and becomes commander of the “Lord Byron” unit. A live English shell hits the building Xenakis was defending with two of his comrades: shrapnel hit his face, smashing his jaw and poking out his left eye. Considered dead and abandoned there, his father found Iannis and took him to a hospital where he underwent several operations.
Xenakis is [later] released from the hospital and goes back to the Polytechnic Institute all while continuing his political activities clandestinely; he is incarcerated several times.”
Source: 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire
