Paul Caldani (Syriac: ܦܘܠܘܣ ܟܠܕܝܐ, Persian: پل كلدانی), is a musician, radio personality, Assyrian scholar, and author of non-fictional Iranian folk tales. He was born on May 25, 1949, in Sanandaj, Iran.
Growing up, he was always surrounded with music and he eventually taught himself to play the Tonbak and the Daf (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, 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.
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In 2002, Caldani has created one of the first Aramaic Hymns notation book with over 100 Aramaic hymns which were published in 2002 for the Assyro-Chaldean churches worldwide.
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][1] 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]
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's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, under the direction of Prof. Wolfhart Heinrichs.
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.