“Saqi”, is a term used in Farsi to refer to the person who serves or provides wine. There is a whole sub-genre or rather a musical form of poetry and music called “Saqi-Nameh”, which revolves around addressing a Saqi. The Saqi could range in meaning from a divine force to a common dealer.
I have collected almost all Saqi-Namehs I could over the course of my postdoctoral research at Darwin College, University of Cambridge. For this collage, I handpicked some of the major ones and admittedly gave a dominant presence to Shajarian’s work. One of the sad ironies is that one of his rare works, which inspired me to start this project, was forgetfully omitted from the final cut, to my deep regret.
In this work, I place different social and cultural classes in different com-positions, in order to highlight the similarities in their form of demanding wine, whatever their actual intention might be using the word “wine”.
I also was very mindful to create a piece of music, above all. One that keeps giving more, rewards the knowledgable listener and keeps her guessing.