Sima Bina - ‘Majnoon Naboudam’

I used to start a lot of live shows with a cover of this, a capella, because I wanted to invoke my family and my grandmother inside the shows I was doing. Sima Bina is an Iranian musician, she comes from the region of my family, Khorasan, which is in the north-east of Iran next to Afghanistan. She dedicated her life to studying folk music from that region, being an ethno-musician almost. Music from that region was almost all oral, so she spent her life travelling and meeting people, collecting songs and re-orchestrating, re-singing and recording them. She’s a friend of my family, so she used to be around at my grandmother and grandfather’s house when I was growing up. It’s my solid heritage music pillar from birth. I love the lyrics, ‘Majnoon Naboudam’ means “I wasn’t crazy”. Love songs in Farsi – Farsi in general, actually – is a very dramatic and emotionally loaded language. Emotions are expressed in everyday interactions, even when you go and buy bread there’s a lot of stuff like “I will eat my heart for you”. It’s very baroque emotionally. This song is a very dramatic love story, and it’s kind of like my earliest mother. She’s a very important person that I call to, and she’s with me in all my shows. I invoke her as much as I can – when I want to I become a container and make space in myself for her. It helps me feel anchored and put my two feet on the ground.