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Bay area choir preserves Persian heritage through music

Visual and Performing Arts Center hosts 14-song concert spanning regional cultures, musical traditions

Sango Levonian, La Voz Staff

November 5, 2025

The Bay Area Persian Choir, a non-profit community music group dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional Persian music, held its fall 2025 Concert in the Visual and Performing Arts Center at De Anza College on Nov. 1.

The choir performed roughly 14 pieces, including traditional folk music from Iran and neighboring regions, as well as an original piece inspired by the Persian poet Rumi.

Video transcript

Click here to collapse or expand video transcript.

0:23

MARK ZANGENEH: The Bay Area Persian Choir is a community based choir, is a nonprofit organization that tries to cultivate the rich Persian heritage and engage the San Francisco Bay Area Persian community. It’s a completely non-partisan, non-religious, non-sectarian organization that welcomes all the interested people. And, we’ve been like this since the very beginning.

0:56

NASER SHEIKHZADEGAN: We try to preserve and promote and cultivate the rich heritage of Iranian music.

So, preserve, I look through all the classic pieces, all time favorite songs, put a new touch on them, put a new arrangement, choral arrangement on them, onto patriotic songs and folk songs. Iran is so diverse as far as cultures from Kurdish to Azerbaijan to the Caspian coast, the different languages, different musical traditions, extremely rich mosaic of musical traditions there.

So we try to pick from that and represent that in our community. And also we want to encourage creation of new works, of new art and want to contribute to, artistic production of new pieces. And that really excites me personally.

1:45

FARNAZ PARHAMI: One of my favorite pieces that we’re going to be performing is called Yawaran. It’s a Kurdish piece. It’s coming from the Kermanshah, western part of Iran. And that’s really represent the diversity in the culture. My parents are from Kurdistan, western part of Iran. And just the fact that I’m able to connect with my background, singing that piece of music is wonderful.

2:14

ZANGENEH: We hope to introduce this culture to non Persian community as well. And so far, people who have taken the step to come and see our performances, they have been nicely impressed, even though they might not understand the lyrics and the meanings of them. But the feelings definitely comes through and the emotion gets through to the audience, so we are hoping to reach the whole community. I think connection with the people and introducing and connecting to them via the music and the lyrics and the songs creates a bond that everybody feels connected to everybody else, and that’s a very strong part of what we do here.

2:58

PARHAMI: Not just the music, the friendship, the community work, the cultural aspect of it.

3:02

SHEIKHZADEGAN: The joy of making music together. And the choir makes that possible, you know, instrumental ensemble, you have to really work years and years to master any instrument before you can participate in it.

But what I love about the choir, if you just have a good ear, some musical training, but appreciate teamwork and have some discipline, then you can participate in the most joyous thing in the world singing together, making music together. I love community work and I encourage everyone to find their community choirs, join it. It’s truly a lot of joy.

3:33

PARHAMI: Try it out. It’s unbelievable. You know, you find, you find pieces of your heart that has been so buried deep in you that you didn’t realize. And then all of a sudden, you find it, as, it’s amazing.

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About the Contributor

Sango Levonian, Multimedia Editor

I’m returning to La Voz as its multimedia editor. I love video work and I’m really excited to work on coverage of news across campus.

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