01. Roya (03:06)
02. Azizam (03:11)
03. Doone Doone (04:38)
04. Mimiram (04:22)
05. Tanha (04:18)
06. Bishtar Behand (03:26)
07. Junoonyani (04:15)
08. Gandomi (03:58)
09. Omid (03:27)
10. Bi Hava (04:27)
11. Roya [female version] (03:48)

“Electro-dance tracks that revive and remix a 1970s era remembered for a lively Iranian pop scene.” – The Guardian

The award-winning Israeli-Persian singer returns with “Roya” (fantasy in Farsi) an exhilarating blend of tradi-modern rhythms and retro-Persian sonics.

Recorded in secrecy in Istanbul with her band from Tel Aviv and risk-defying Iranian musicians from Tehran. A musical portal to a place of peace, joy and unfettered freedom.

Shadow patterns through a decorative screen window. A door opening deep inside a deserted ancient palace. A shimmering blue veil through which kohl-rimmed eyes watch, and widen. Intrigue. Mystery. The past and present, overlapping. Roya.

The new third album from award-winning Israeli-Persian singer Liraz is an invitation to dream. Anthems, love ballads, glittery Middle Eastern dance tunes … A collection of 11 tracks that enrich that signature blend of tradi-modern rhythms and retro-Persian sonics, Roya (‘fantasy’ in Farsi) is music as a magic portal, an arched gateway to a place of peace, joy and unfettered, chador-waving freedom.

“My fantasy, I wished for peace in the world,” she sings in Farsi, in that golden voice, on the hallucinogenic title track. “I will not lose my hope/You’ll see, our hearts will cross.”

Liraz and her Israeli sextet (three women, three men) recorded Roya over ten days in Istanbul, in a basement studio hidden from public view and crackling with creativity.

With them, on violin, viola and the tar, the wasp-waisted wooden Iranian lute, were composers and musicians from the Iranian capital, Tehran. The same clutch of anonymous players who previously collaborated with Liraz online, no questions asked, no faces shown, under the radar of Tehran’s secret police, for her feted 2020 album, Zan. Players who’d travelled undercover from Tehran to Istanbul to work with Liraz and producer/multi- instrumentalist Uri Brauner Kinrot in the flesh.

Or at least, that is what Liraz imagined.

‘There is a passage connecting our tongue and heart, sustaining the secrets of the world and soul,’ wrote Rumi, the greatest Sufi mystic and poet in the Persian language, whose prose Liraz treasures. ‘As long as our tongue is locked the channel is open/the moment our tongue unlocks the passage will close.’

“Was it just in my mind? Was I really in the same room as these Iranian soul sisters and brothers?” Liraz pauses, waves an elegant hand. “All I remember are fragments: the fear and anxiety I felt when I knew they were on their way. The tears of joy and relief we all cried as we embraced. And the music we made! Such music!” She flashes a smile. “It just poured out of us,” she says.

With strings snaking through pulsing electronics and wah-wah-guitars, ‘Azizam’ is a psychedelic wonder, strobing around lyrics that tell of unhinged obsession (“You are the evil killing me/I, who is in love with you”). Featuring music written by bassist Amir Sadot, ‘Doone Doone’ is a rollicking ode to the Tehrani musicians Liraz befriended through computer screens – and who might have been right there, in touching distance, recording with her. ‘Mimiram’ delivers dramatic protestations of love with knowing irreverence; while ‘Omid’ – [which is both a man’s name and the Farsi word for ‘hope’] with lyrics by an anonymous Iranian female musician and music by Zan co-writer Ilan Smilan – tells of a man named Hope and of hope, who is also a man.

A slow, lonely song about Iran, the string-and-synth-driven ‘Tanha’ was recorded on the day the Iranians may or may not have arrived in Istanbul. “I am singing about the boundaries that have melted between us,” says Liraz, who wrote the words and co-wrote the music with Smilan and Brauner Kinrot. “I cried a lot between takes.”

Her Hebrew accent intact (“This is my story, my culture clash”), her confidence boosted by prestigious awards (she was Songlines Artist of the Year 2021) and widespread international acclaim, Liraz has never sounded so passionate, so strong and defiant. Roya, then, is the next phase of a high-profile career further distinguished by a drive to fight oppression, to champion the right of women everywhere to sing, perform and be heard.

“Israel and Iran are not living in peace. Israelis cannot visit Iran, and Iranians cannot visit Israel. If Iranians contact Israelis they will go to jail,” says Liraz, whose parents, Sephardic Jews of Iranian–Jewish descent, left for Israel back when the two countries had close ties – but when, even prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution, being a Jew in Iran was kept quiet.

Her grandmother had wanted a career as a singer, a profession forbidden to women in Iran.

“Even aged 85, she is a great singer; the other day I put on a record by an Iranian singer and she got up and sang loudly. My family have to sing,” says Liraz, who grew up dancing to the music of divas such as Ramesh and Googoosh celebrated in Tehran in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the golden age of Persian pop. She also loved female singer-songwriters: Kate Bush, Tori Amos.

Lessons in singing, music and acting – and a stint spent clubbing – were followed by three years working in the US as an actress, appearing in the big budget films such as Fair Game and A Late Quartet. In Tehrangeles – the Little Tehran of Los Angeles – she found her people, embraced her inner Persian: “Iran has always seemed like a lover I’ve been longing for. I can sense how it is to be Iranian but I’m not in that bubble inside Iran.”

“This paradox made me a dreamer,” Liraz continues, who in a neat art/life twist appeared as a Farsi-speaking Mossad operative in the 2020 Apple TV espionage series Tehran. “What if I was born in Iran and could not sing – would I try and escape? There are always so many stories and visions inside my head. But I know that I need to sing, I must sing, for the muted women of Iran. And I want to sing to Iran about my feelings for Iran.”

Her 2018 debut album Naz, a collection of mainly pre-revolutionary pop songs by her favourite female Iranian singers, lit up Iran’s social media. Liraz was sent videos of women dancing inside their homes, their chadors, headscarves and veils cast off, their faces joyous. Iranian musicians began sending her clips, lyrics and melodies via encrypted files, and so the songs for Zan – and her relationships with the anonymous musicians – took shape.

With each album, Liraz has grown bolder, more outspoken (ask her about Palestine and she’ll extol Palestinian rights, too). If recording in an underground studio with the musicians from Tehran was a fantasy, it was a palpable one. The scintillating ‘Bishtar Behand’ captures the healing power of laughter and togetherness. ‘Gandomi’, its lyrics and music written anonymously, praises cross-cultural romance and commitment; where ‘Joonyani’ tells of crazy love, of kissing pictures each night, the cinematic ‘Bi Hava’ – string-laden and serene – seems to close the circle of friendship between Liraz, her band and the Tehrani musicians.

“I sing that it is not one day we are going to meet. We are already here with each other, in the now. So let us enjoy being together.”

On the closing track, a female-led version of the opener ‘Roya’, they do precisely that. “I’d felt so much power from these ladies who arrived from Iran,” says Liraz. “We became like sisters. On the last day, with one hour left before everyone had to go, I asked the Iranian women and the three women in my band to record a very live organic fusion of ‘Roya’.”

“We got it in one amazing take. We all cried as we hugged and said goodbye and then just like that, everyone was gone.” Her dark eyes flash. “Like they’d never been there at all.”

Somewhere in the past, fluttering towards the future, a blue veil flies, free, in the wind.

1. Zan Bezan (4:14)
2. Injah (4:23)
3. Dolate Eshg (3:33)
4. Joon Joon (3:43)
5. Shab Gerye (3:49)
6. Mastam (3:39)
7. Bia Bia (3:38)
8. Hala (3:47)
9. Nafas (3:38)
10. Lalai (5:04)

Liraz, the highly touted Israeli-Persian singer, returns with a buoyant and border-busting new album. Shimmering electro-pop meets pulsing dance rhythms and retro Persian sonics. Includes clandestine collaborations with Iran-based musicians and composers.

Liraz has taken her shimmering electro-pop underground. She’s turned it into something dangerous and even more beautiful than before. For her second album, Zan (“Women” in Farsi), the Israeli-Persian singer collaborated online with composers and musicians from Iran. Everything had to be secretive to avoid the gaze of Tehran’s mullahs and secret police. The result is her private revolution, songs with a true message, music to make people dance and smile – and above all, think.

The songs on Zan are the fulfilment of a dream, taking Liraz deep into the soul of the country that fills her heart and populated the stories her parents told her as a child – but one she’s never seen. They were written for the women in her family and to connect with her own history, quite often the same thing.

“I sing because of these women, to them, for them,” Liraz explains. “My grandmothers were engaged when they were 11 and 12 and married at 15. They both had many children, but they had so much passion for life. I grew up with so many crazy stories about these women. My mother broke down the walls around women. So did my aunt. I watched them since I was a child. They fought for their freedom, and I’m fighting for mine, telling the stories about them in my songs.”

Her family, Iranian Jews, moved to Tel Aviv in the 1970s. Yet although Liraz was raised in Israel, she’s always believed that “my culture is Iranian.” The real revelation came when she moved to the US for three years to work as an actress, appearing in several big-budget movies, including A Late Quartet and Fair Game. In Los Angeles she found a huge Iranian community.

“There are a million Iranians there, so many I started to call it Tehrangeles. Suddenly I felt I belonged somewhere besides Israel. I heard this music from before the revolution and I started to collect it. Some was by women who didn’t stop singing after the revolution, as they were supposed to do. They left Iran so they could continue and I heard the courage in their voices. That made me realise I didn’t want to act, I wanted to sing.”

And she did, making Naz (2018), where she wrote and sang in Farsi, the music at times exploring the sounds of pre-revolution Iranian pop music. And for the first time, Liraz felt her voice was beginning to blossom and fill the hole in her heart.

“It’s the language of my parents,” she explains. “I felt it was the only way I could connect to my heritage and to my grandparents, and still keep pushing forward as a woman.”

When the album was done, she knew she wanted to take things even deeper next time. To work with Iranian musicians and let her voice and her music resonate further.

“At first the idea seemed like a fantasy,” Liraz says, “But I had a lot of luck. Some people in Iran had found Naz and got in touch online. Musicians sent me videos; some wrote every day. I posted questions, asking about different players and instruments. Over a year and a half, the songs for Zan took shape. Some were scared, since helping like this was against the law and asked me not to use their names.”

One of those anonymous players, a female percussionist based in Tehran, features on the opening track, “Zan Bezan,” (in English “Women, Sing”) alongside Liraz’s Israeli band. It’s an insistent, catchy piece of electro-pop with heavy musical nods to Iranian pop stars of the 1970s like Googoosh; the message of female empowerment, however, is absolutely contemporary.

Another secret Iranian collaborator worked on the powerful earworm that’s “Joon Joon,” where the dance beats erupt straight from a 1970s Tehran disco, while the big chorus implants itself in the brain and refuses to leave.

“Joon is my name for my daughter, a nickname that means ‘my soul,’” Liraz says. “When we talked online, one of the Tehran musicians would see me with my daughter and asked who she was. That was how the song began.”

Zan is an album of contrasts, like “Shab Gerye,” the ballad that Liraz knew she needed to include “because the words and music fit so perfectly. It’s a love song about reality,” or the aching closer, “Lalai.”

“That’s a lullaby,’ she explains. “My grandmother sang it, my mother sang it, and I sing it to my daughter. It’s been in our family for generations. I knew I had a mission to do it. It’s a song that says you need to fight for your own life, my girl.”

There’s power in its tenderness – twin sentiments that sum up Zan. The album continues breaking the walls her mother and aunts began to dismantle. But it does much more: it burrows under borders. It connects countries and cultures.

“All the songs were written in Tel Aviv and Tehran. I feel like those collaborators are my brothers. Here we live in a democracy, but we have a crazy government. In Iran their lives are so regimented, yet they can do what they want in their own homes.”

Zan, Liraz insists, is the second chapter of the story that began with Naz. But it’s also one that stands alone. This is underground music in the very best sense, true political pop with names withheld for safety. Clandestine collaborations that started in the shadows but burst out of the speakers in a mix of traditional Persian instruments, the instruments that touched Liraz as she grew up, alongside club beats and call-to-action melodies.

“I don’t want it to be plastic,” she says. It’s not. The honesty, the passion, the commitment and hope shine through in every note and nuance. She’s opened her private revolution to everyone.