DESCRIPTION:
Track 7 'Dotar' Instrumental from Night, Silence, Desert, a collaborative album by Iranian musician Kayhan Kalhor with Mohammad Reza Shajarian and others, released on 12 September 2000 in the United States through Traditional Crossroads records.

It explores much of the same musical terrain and integrates the amazing voice of Mohammed Reza Shajarian, the undisputed master of Persian classical singing, into the stillness.

The music on this album is in the radif style -- a collection of Persian classical modes, but the maqam or folk tradition from which the music originates is clearly evident. The music is drawn from the folk traditions of Khorasan, a northeastern province of Iran from where the singer, Mohammed Reza Shajarian, comes.

To give this classical arrangement an essentially Khorasani folk sound, two masters of indigenous instruments were included in the music. The dotar, a plucked lute, and the ghooshmeh, a double reed flute, are played here by Hadj Ghorban Soleimani and Ali Abchouri.