Snow

Somber and deeply intimate, Barf (Snow) was released in 2000 in Iran — a year after its first appearance in the United States. Consisting of eight songs, Barf somewhat shares the same theme as Farhad’s previous album, Khab dar Bidari (Asleep in Wake). A folk-rock sound can be heard in only three songs, “Morghe Sahar,” “Rubaiat,” and “Gole Yakh,” while “Morghe Sahar” is a classic Iranian traditional song with lyrics by famous reformist Iranian poet Malekoshoara Bahar and music by Morteza Khan Ney Davoud, previously performed by many artists, including Mohammed Reza Shajarian. These three songs are performed on solo acoustic guitar by Farhad himself. The rest of the songs are more orchestrated and can barely be considered folk-rock, the style that Farhad started with in the ’60s. In “Vaghti ke Bache Boudam” (When I Was a Child) and “Khab dar Bidari” (based on a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez, and also appearing on Khab dar Bidari) there lies a deep longing for childhood years, while “Gole Yakh” once again shows Farhad’s love of his home country, Iran. His respect for his homeland can also be heard in “To ra Doust Daram” (I Love You) in Khab dar Bidari and the title song from the album Vahdat (Unity), which — more than being a religious song — was a call for unity during the late-’70s Iranian political upheavals. Despite such high points, a few songs (for instance, “Gandhi,” “Rubaiat,” and in some sense “Morghe Sahar”) are conceptually inconsistent when compared to other five songs on the album. Most of the songs are composed by Farhad and arranged by Andranik, and all the piano solos are also played by Farhad. Although Farhad was planning to record a new album after Barf called Amin (Amen), which was planned to be a covers album, Barf became a sad farewell. Just as he had sung in “Katibeh,” he died two years later on “warm sands of the summer” in August 2002 in Paris. – Pouya Partovi