Airyanam Vaejah - Epic Iranian Music

Music & vocals by Farya Faraji. Please note that this isn’t reconstructed ancient music, it’s modern Iranian music with an ancient theme. The lyrics are in the Avestan language, an East Iranic language in whose cultural context the Zoroastrian religion was born, hence why Avestan remains to this day the liturgical language of the religion.

Airyanam Vaejah is a legendary homeland of the Iranian peoples described in the Zoroastrian texts, variously located by modern day researchers around areas in Afghanistan and the neighbouring regions. The root of the word Airyanam is the same as Iran and Iranian. The Iranians, whose name was pronounced more like Aryan, thousands of years ago, would name their land after them, hence how get Aryana, which over time morphs into Eran, and into Iran, disproving the widely popular myth that Persia, the foreign Ancient Greek exonym of the land, is somehow the ancient, historical name of Iran.

The instrumentation consists of a tombak drum, a kurdish tanbour, an oud, and a ney flute. The melody uses a more microtonal variant of the mode Shur widely used in the Northwestern parts of the country. The time signature is irregular and in measures of 5, as is common in some Classical Persian music and folk music of the country.

Lyrics in Avestan:
Ayrianam khvarano yazamaide,
Airyanam Vaejo.

English translation:
We praise the glory of Iran,
The Homeland of the Iranians.

Note on the translation: I decided to translate the terms Aryan and Aryana etc as Iran and Iranian simply because they are the same terms, only evolved in time, much like how "provincia" and "province" are effectively the same words etymologically, only at different points in time.