Paul Caldani

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Paul Caldani (پل كلدانی) (Musician, radio personality, Assyrian scholar, and author of non-fictional Iranian folk tales) was born on May 25, 1949, in Sanandaj (سنندج), Iran (ایران).

Growing up, he was always surrounded with music and he eventually taught himself to play the Tonbak (تنبك) and the Daf (دف) (Persian Instruments)^[1] at the age of six, and went on to perform many concerts in Iran. In 1958, an Iranian TV children's program invited him to perform live Kurdish dance on TV where he performed Kurdish dance and playing the Tonbak and Daf until his late teens. Later, impressed by the music and he developed an intensive fascination with Iranian folk music (موسیقی محلی ایران), specifically Kurdish dance and Kurdish music. At the age of 19, he became interested in learning to play the piano, organ and keyboard. Within 2 years he became fluent in playing all three instruments under the direction of his music teacher, maestro Paulus Khofri. In addition to dedicating his life to music, Paul obtained his B.A. degree in business management and in 2004 a master's degree in education curriculum, both with honors.

Contents 1 2002 Published Aramaic Hymns 2 Scholar 3 Composer 4 Writer and Translator 5 Articles and publication 6 Music works 7 See also 8 References 9 External links

[edit] 2002 Published Aramaic Hymns

In 2002, Caldani has created one of the first Aramaic Hymns (ٱرامی) notation book with over 100 Aramaic hymns which were published in 2002 for the Assyro-Chaldean churches worldwide.

[edit] Scholar

Paul's research focused on accelerating his music background through holistic and dynamic understanding of Iranian folk music and also Assyro-Chaldean church hymns. The Iranian folk music was facilitated by the collecting over 1000 folk CDs and tapes and communicating with maestro and folk music schalor Dr. Mohammad Taghi Massoudieh (محمد تقی مسعودیه) and Mohammad Reza Darvishi (محمد رضا درویشی) in Iran in order to collect more data and documents from the several different dialects of Iran.^[2] Consequently he joined a Persian radio station in Los Angeles, California, becoming a producer and broadcaster of Iranian folk music at Radio Iran 670 am KIRN.^[3]

[edit] Composer

Paul has continued his interest in music by composing over 50 Aramaic hymns for the Chaldean church, and also over 30 Persian, Assyrian, and Kurdish music.In 2002, The "Melodies of a Distant Land" was his first album which was created for all the Chaldeans in the Senaya community. A copy of this album is currently used as music reference at Harvard University Dept of Semantics, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Wolfhart Heinrichs.

[edit] Writer and Translator

During his academic careers he was impressed by his Persian Literature professor, the late famous author of Iran Islam Kazimiyeh (اسلام كاظمیه), and had shown his interest in writing non-fiction stories, so under the direction of his professor he pursued to write non-fiction stories. He has written 141 short folk stories in Persian which had been broadcast on the Persian radio station, Radio Iran 670 am KIRN Los Angeles, California. Currently the copies of these audio have been stored in the archives of the radio station.

[edit] Articles and publication

• Published several articles in Persian and English.^{[4][5][6][7][8]}
• Translated and published several articles from English to Persian for the Hamsayegan Persian-language newspaper published in Los Angeles, California).^[9][10]
• Arranged & published an Aramaic hymns notation book for the Assyro-Chaldean Catholic Church.

[edit] Music works

• Instrumental Hymns Album labeled Aramaic hymns c.2000

• Melodies of a Distant Land Album music in the Senaya language. Music and lyrics by Paul Caldani c.2002 ^[11]

• Nobar Bahar, A Persian children's music album c.2003

[edit] See also

List of Assyrians

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• How to Merge Modern Music into Our Traditional Hymns
• A more effective manner in improving the relationship of the youth in our congregation
• Hamsayegan Newspaper
• Twenty Folk Songs of Fârs; Tehran, Chang 1984; Mâhoor 1994