About Abdi Yamini, one of the best arrangers in the history of pop music / unfinished genius

Charso Press: At noon on July 24, 1988, the Tupolev 154 plane of Caspian Airlines, which was on its way to Yerevan, crashed in Farsian Qazvin village and all 168 people on board died instantly. Among these oppressed victims, the names of the members of the national judo team of Iran, Lon Davidian, the representative of the 6th term of the parliament, Natla Nikolava, the wife of the Georgian ambassador to Iran, and Martik Daravansian, the founder of the field of technical orthopedics of Iran, can be seen. Such a tragic incident was combined with worse news for music fans, when it was heard that the name of Abdi Yamini, a famous Iranian composer and arranger, was also on the passenger list of this flight. For many Iranians, his name was of course unknown, but the people of Fan and those who are fond of musical instruments and singing, felt a painful and bitter hesitation with this news. The longing of a genius who had decades to create beauty. But who was Abdi Yamini and what did he do? And why should his death be considered a great tragedy?

Abdolreza Yamini known as Abdi Yamini was born in June 1332 in Tehran. His father was a soldier and did not approve of his son pursuing music. But the love of music was so deeply rooted in Abdi’s being that he went to England to study music at Southend College and in 1983, he received a master’s degree in music from the University of Surrey. This great interest later took him to Austria to learn the basics of classical music. The next destination of Yamini was America; Where the people of Iranian pop music had made it their second home and they used to play the instruments in exile during the ban on music inside Iran. Young Yamini also made a home in America and his knowledge and skill in playing instruments such as piano, guitar, keyboard and beyond that, orchestra conducting, composing and arranging, brought him to the attention of top pop singers and music companies. Thus, in a period of nearly one and a half decades, he not only led the orchestra of singers such as Dariush Iqbali, but also arranged a series of works, many of which are examples of the best arrangements in the history of Iranian music and are a sign of the genius of a young musician who, through musical knowledge, work commitment, professional sensitivity to recording and live performance of instruments, mastery of emerging electronic music and instruments such as piano and key Board and gathering and attracting cooperation and leadership of a wide range of the best Iranian and foreign musicians in his groups, succeeded in opening a new way forward for Iranian pop music and left a lasting name for himself in the history of Iranian art.

The new season of Iranian pop arrangement

Apart from important and era-making albums such as “Aman Az” and “Safarnameh”, in which Abdi Yamini has experienced a unique flight along with Shahyar Ghanbari’s songs, Abdi Yamini’s frequent collaborations with many other Iranian singers have also become milestones in the artistic career of those singers. Mansour, a singer who started working in the 1370s, collaborated extensively with Yamini in the albums “Farfrahai Bibad”, “Final Image”, “Dariche” and “Paper Boat”, and Abdi managed to create an image of a different singer for him, which later on, of course, completely changed. Songs such as “Dilbar” and “Aqaki” by Abi, “Milad” by Moin, “Waqfeh”, “Naft”, “Safir” and “Aghosh Aftabi” by Hatef, “Chera Ba Man” by Omid, “Daira Joud” by Bijan Mortazavi and “Nazanin” by Mehrdad Asemani also have the stamp of Yamini’s brilliant arrangements on their foreheads; The same is the case with works such as “Oxygen”, “Mirage”, “Tale”, “Mama”, “Key” and…

Besides these, the re-arrangements of many old songs by singers such as Dariush in the two albums “Scene 1” and “Scene 2” and Aref (the album “Sultan of Hearts”) and Manouchehr Sakhai, who by chance also found immense popularity among the audience of these songs, were a sign of the fact that Novin Abdi’s arrangements and his modern arrangements had found a special connection with the new generation of Iranian music, thus making him one of the top arrangers. Iranian pop music became; As Shahyar Ghanbari rightly says about him: “Abdi is, in my opinion, the wisest musician I have worked with in all these years. Abdi had a high education in music. in Austria and England. That is, Abdi was not an “accidental” musician. Abdi dedicated his whole life to music. Even for the sake of music, he didn’t give in to his father’s wishes and continued the path of music.”

The bitter end

Abdi came to Iran in the late 1370s for some family issues and because of what some consider to be bored with the artistic atmosphere of Los Angeles, and left a few works in Iran, including collaboration with Mohammad Khakpour. These works, however, never achieved the level of importance and fame that Abdi Yamini’s efforts achieved in America. With his strange death, but now we are left and “always surprised and sad” to hear the voice of Abdi Yamini’s “lovely instrument”; An unfinished genius who, like the father of Iranian music arrangement, Varujan, passed away amidst the silence of the society and people of culture, in middle age and at the peak of his artistic creativity.