Press
• Spinner.com:
City of Leaves Bridges Tehran to Tarzana
• LA Times:
latimesblogs.latimes.com/
• nationalgeographic.com:
It’s been almost 10 years since Persian singer Sussan Deyhim knocked our socks off with Madman of God, but now she’s back with another stunner – and this time she’s joined by a veritable who’s who of collaborators, including Richard Horowitz, Bill Laswell and DJ Spooky. Available on CD January 31st.
- read more
• worldmusiccentral.org/city-of-leaves
• nationaleventsconference.com/sussan-deyhim-releases-city-of-leaves
• The New York Times
“Sussan Deyhim creates thrilling music that sounds in the ear long after you’ve left the show.”
• LA Times
“The extraordinary Deyhim, a computer age coloratura has conquered unimagined realms…”
• LA Times
Sussan Deyhim is one of Iran’s most potent voices in exile for the simple reason that she possesses a marvelously potent voice. She wails and coos and ululates, the sound of the soul in translation. When she sings low and gravelly, she transforms herself into an earthy, erotic chanteuse. When high, she flies free with the birds.
Her country, where she cannot return, now discourages music. Maybe the time has come for her bigger musical guns.
• Bobby McFerrin on Sussan Deyhim [link]
“Sussan Deyhim is a fascinating original voice in music and the arts. Her rich and complex vocals are warm, beautifully sung, and always surprising. I’m proud that she is and has been a member of our ‘Voicestra’ for many years.”
~ read more
• Out of Faze review [link]
“…The range of personalities co-existing in her vocal cords is astonishing, and she can effortlessly move from seductive to militant, make you melt just as easily as scare the pants off you.”
~ read more
• Iranian expatriate artists’ projects give voice to countrymen [link]
“…Deyhim said she believed that, despite the government’s ongoing crackdown, the recent protests had given many Westerners a more nuanced view of Iranian society and culture. The protesters’ courage under fire, their sophisticated use of Twitter, flip-cams and other mass-communication tools, and the glimpses that the demonstrations gave of resolute women presented an image of a cultured, cosmopolitan society, in contrast to the monolithic, drably fundamentalist picture of Iran that Western media usually depict.
“We’ve gotten an amazing, amazing look at what Iran is really about in the last couple of weeks,” she said. “Whatever has happened for the last 30 years is in no way representative of Persian culture. It’s just a dark moment.” ~ read more
• Showtime’s “Sleeper Cell” Spawns Soundtrack [link]
• Madman of God (Crammed Discs craw 22, 2006) [link]
The Sufi are a minority sect in the Muslim world, their belief in music and poetry as means of spiritual enlightenment running particularly contrary to the prevailing (and misguided) image of Islam as a religion that seeks to suppress such forms of artistic expression. It’s Sufism that fuels such musical styles as qawwali and Gnawa trance, and it’s what inspired influential poets like Rumi. The words of those 11th to 19th century mystic poets and the classical Persian melodies that turned them into songs are the basis of Sussan Deyhim’s Madman of God.
-Shepherd-Express (Milwaukee, WI)
-May 18, 2006
• Madman of God [link]
(Crammed)
The Sufis were always masters of ecstasy, the art of escaping the prison of individuality in union with all. Music and dance were among their vehicles. Sussan Deyhim, a young woman of Iranian descent working in New York, approaches Sufi songs with a contemporary attitude yet respectful to the form and spirit of the music and words. Augmenting the traditional Near Eastern strings and percussion instruments with cello, acoustic base and a glittering beading of electronics, Deyhim weaves her ancient melodies and poems into a textured sound reminiscent of Dead Can Dance.
-David Luhrssen
• To Evoke and Live the Vibration
In Conversation with Sussan Deyhim [link]
With her voice Sussan Deyhim is able to achieve miraculous feats of tone, vibration and timbre; and yet these are not mere acrobatics. The term “sussantics”, dubbed by members of Loop Guru to describe her incredible vocal range and innovative techniques, hardly does her work justice. Much more than antics or vocal gymnastics, her vocalizations reflect her uncompromising spirit of experimentalism, of working from within various traditions in order to push them further into new musical forms.
-By Richard di Santo
28 October 2001
