Ali Akbar Moradi

About Ali Akbar Moradi

Ali Akbar Moradi is a Kurdish tanbur master from Kermanshah province and the best-known player of the Kurdish tanbur in the world. He was born in 1957 in Gahvareh, in the Guran area of Kermanshah province, a heartland of the Yarsan (Ahl-e Haqq) faith, for whom the tanbur is a sacred instrument. He began playing at the age of seven and studied with Yarsani masters including Sayyed Vali Hosseini, who guided him through the old Kurdish maqam repertoire of the tanbur.

His professional career began in 1971 as a founding member of the first tanbur ensemble in Kermanshah. By about the age of thirty he had learned the whole cycle of seventy-two tanbur maqams, the melodic pieces at the heart of Yarsani ritual music, a body of knowledge very few living musicians hold. He wrote a method book for the tanbur that covers most of the well-known maqams, and he teaches in Kermanshah and Tehran.

Moradi has performed at festivals and concert halls in Europe and North America and has worked with the singer Shahram Nazeri and the kamancheh master Kayhan Kalhor. His albums include Fire of Passion: Kurdish Tanbur Music of Iran (1999), Kurdaneh, Whisper (Najva) and Kurdish Music from Iran, and above all In the Mirror of the Sky (2004), his acclaimed duet album with Kalhor. Today he often performs with his sons Arash and Kourosh Moradi. More than any other musician, he has carried the sacred Kurdish tanbur of the Yarsan to international audiences.

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