Peroz of China - Epic Chinese Iranian Music

Music & vocals by Farya Faraji, guzheng by Yiang Ling, erhu by Amanda Toh, artwork by J.F Oliveras: https://jfoliveras.artstation.com/pro...

This is me having some fun mixing together the modern Iranian and Chinese musical traditions as a thematic way to represent Peroz III, the son of the last Sasanian Emperor who went to exile in China. Promoted as a high ranking military officer of the Tang-era Chinese realm, he would, alongside his son Narsieh, try to reconquer Iran with the military aid of China from the hands of the Arab Muslims, but would ultimately fail to do so. Despite this, a Zoroastrian, Iranian diaspora would continue to exist in China for many centuries afterwards as refugees from the Islamic invasion of Iran.

The main melody at the beginning was created from first writing a typical Iranian melody in the mode of Shur, and then subtracting notes from it in order to create a pentatonic effect; the principal melodic form of Chinese music. I also added my Sasanian leitmotif, played in the manner of modern Persian Classical music using the setar, tar and oud, with the tombak as the drum accompaniment. The Iranian daf provides the main percussions throughout most of the piece, and they're accompanied by the guzheng, erhu, yangqin, a Chinese dulcimer, the santour, a closely related Iranian dulcimer, and the Iranian ney flute.

More interestingly, the melody that starts at 02:48 is a historical melody from circa the period of Peroz III, played on modern Chinese instruments. Called Jiu Huzi, or the Wine Puppet, this melody comes to us from Tang-era China, and was transcribed in the 70's by Laurence Picken, who found it surviving in 12th century Japanese manuscripts, where it was called Shukoshi. The reason I featured this melody goes beyond its era-appropriate nature, as it's a piece of music that is inherently linked to the Iranian world. The piece of music seems to be in reference to a tradition of puppetry that portrayed Sogdians, an Iranic people related to the Persians, whose wine seemed to have been prized by the local Chinese. An important Sogdian diaspora seemed to exist there, and these puppets would portray the exotically dressed, red-haired and blue eyed Sogdian character getting drunk and falling over. In The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of T'ang Exotics (1963), Edward H. Schafer, paraphrasing the Japanese scholar Ishida Mikinosuke, writes: "The same young poets who languished over the pretty Iranian waitresses in the metropolitan wineshops laughed at the little puppets representing drunken Sogdians, with their peaked caps, blue eyes, and high noses, with which they played in houses of prostitution--when the ridiculous puppet fell over, the guest at whom it pointed had to empty his cup... These puppets were called chiu hu-tzu [i.e., jiu huzi, 酒胡子] or pu tsui hsien [i.e., bu zui xian, 捕醉仙]."

The lyrics come from the Ballad of King Vahram, part of which I sang in my song of the same name from 2021. A piece of Middle-Persian Zoroastrian text from after the Islamic invasion (some scholars argue very soon after the invasion), it represent the hopes of the Zoroastrian Iranians for the return of a messianic figure from India who will drive away the Muslims and restore the native religion to the land.

Middle-Persian lyrics:
Be niger ka čand wad abgand ān druz pad ēn gēhān ka nēst wattar az ōy andar gēhān.

Mazgitīhā frōd hilēm, be nišānēm ātaxšān uzdēszārīhā be kanēm ud pāk kunēm az gēhān, tā wany šawēnd druz-wišūdagān az ēn gēhān.

Frazaft pad drōd šādīh

English translation:
Behold how much evil that demon has cast upon the world,
There is no more evil than they in the world,

We will destroy the mosques, establish fires,
We will raze the idol temples and blot them from the world,

Til' evil gets destroyed, the daevic creature from the world,
Finished with salutations and happiness.