Ali Pahlavan

Ali Pahlavan
Background information
Born	(1975-05-01) 1 May 1975 Tehran, Iran
Genres	Pop
Occupation(s)	Musician, Songwriter, Composer
Instruments	Guitar, Vocals
Years active	1998–present
Associated acts	Arian Band
Website	www.alipahlavan.com

Ali Pahlavan (Persian: علی پهلوان‎) (born 1 May 1975) is an Iranian musician, singer-songwriter, lyricist and composer. He started his professional music career in 1999 by establishing the first Iranian pop band, Arian (Persian: گروه آریان‎). The band subsequently achieved nationwide success in the 2000s with the albums Sunflower (Persian: گل آفتابگردون‎), And but love (Persian: و اما عشق‎), Till eternity (Persian: تا بی نهایت‎) and Without you, with you^[1] (Persian: بی تو، با تو‎). Their second album has the record of best selling pop album in the history of pop music in Iran.^[2] The band has released 5 albums, sold more than 5 million records and performed more than 400 concerts all around the world. The Arian Band's fifth album, titled Goodbye, was released on March 2015, the band announced that this will be their last album together. Ali will continue his individual music career afterwards.

Personal life

Ali Pahlavan, an ethnic Mazandarani, was born on 1 May 1975, thirteen years before his younger brother, in Tehran, Iran. Although Pahlavan's primary instrument was the Daf (Persian: دف‎), a traditional musical instrument from Iran, he decided to continue his musical life with the Guitar. He started learning guitar from Vafa Faraji when he was 17. He studied Industrial Engineering in university and after collecting his bachelor, he went to do his military service. During his service, he met Payam Salehi, the other co-lead vocalist of Arian.^[3] They decided to create a band and have a concert together. This decision resulted a concert in Qeshm island one year later on 1998. This concert was the biggest leap for the group, where they met a producer who asked them to do an album, and things got bigger than they expected.

Arian Band (1998–present)

Having a contract with a producer, Pahlavan and other members of Arian started to work on their first album, Sunflower. The album was released in 2000 and it was so successful that they decided to continue this way and start working on another album, which was released in 2001 named And but love and was the best-seller album of the year. Till eternity was the name of their third album which was released in 2004 and was also the best seller album of the year. Being on top of the charts in Iran, Arian decided to distribute its name over the borders and hold concerts world wide. They traveled to Canada, Europe, USA and some Asian countries and had many successful concerts world wide. At one point the band sold more than 54,000 tickets to one of their concerts in less than six hours.^[4] Touring Europe, they met Chris De Burgh and produced a Persian-English version of his song The Words I Love You. They released their fourth album, Without you, With you in the year 2008 which included the song with Chris De Burgh. Pahlavan became more responsible when Ninef Amirkhas, Arranger and Keyboard player of the group left Arian to continue his studies. Now he has the responsibility to arrange the songs as well.

Solo career (2014–present)

On September 2014, Ali announced that he is planning to continue his career as a solo artist. He released his first single entitled "Silent Memories" right after that.^[5]

References