It was all rather serendipitous, really!  I was going to attend the Iranian Alliances Across Borders Conference at UC Berkeley last April.  Among the program notices I was reviewing, I learnt that the event’s entertainment was going to be by Fared Shafinury and his band, Tehranosaurus.  Earlier last year, I had had a good taste of Fared’s music when Jahanshah had featured a video clip of his song, Arianaz, on Iranian.com.  I contacted Fared and asked him if there was anything my friends and I could do to help him and his band while in Berkeley.  He wrote back and we became friends.

Fared was born and raised to Iranian parents in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1982.  His parents had left Iran in 1976 with his older brother, Majid, settling down in Corpus Christi with just a handful of other Iranian families in the area.

Fared says his father played Golha Program tapes to them at bedtime, planting the seeds of love for Persian music in his heart.  He started taking cello lessons at a very young age.  He says he had a hard time handling the instrument which was bigger than him!  But he learnt and he learnt well. However, he was having his own “moments“ with classical music, too.

In his own words: “….hiding my Iranian identity was never an option. At age thirteen playing cello as 3rd chair in the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, the conductor constantly reprimanded my excessive use of loose vibrato and quick thrills (distinct elements of Persian classical music) when performing Bach & Beethoven.“