5 Questions to Sahba Aminikia (Founder, Flying Carpet Festival)

LANA NORRIS

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Sahba Aminikia is an Iranian-American composer, pianist, and educator born in post-revolutionary wartime in Iran. Aminikia first explored immersive, visceral music in a successful performance career before pivoting to artistic direction of Flying Carpet Festival, an international music festival serving refugee children in Turkey. At time of writing, Aminikia’s birth country Iran is experiencing significant and violent upheaval. ICIYL offers particular thanks to Sahba for his generous work and shares hope for peace and restoration in Iran, Turkey, and its neighboring region.

YOU LEFT AN ESTABLISHED COMPOSITIONAL AND ACADEMIC LIFE BEHIND IN SAN FRANCISCO TO LAUNCH FLYING CARPET CHILDREN FESTIVAL IN MARDIN, TURKEY FOR SOME 5,000 CHILD REFUGEE RESIDENTS. IN PARTNERSHIP WITH MÜZIKHANE (HOUSE OF MUSIC) AND SIRKHANE SOCIAL CIRCUS SCHOOL, THE FESTIVAL ENTERTAINS AND EDUCATES CHILDREN AFFECTED BY WAR AND SOCIAL TRAUMA USING CIRCUS ARTISTS, MULTI-MEDIA PRODUCERS, TRANCE DANCERS, TRADITIONAL KURDISH MUSICIANS, ACROBATS, FIRE DANCERS, TRAPEZE ARTISTS, JUGGLERS, AND HULA HOOPERS! WHAT WAS YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH CIRCUS ARTS AND MUSIC BEFORE THIS? WHAT WAS YOUR LEARNING CURVE?

I have to emphasize that this project is not just a humanitarian project and is in fact a continuation of what I have been doing compositionally and artistically until now. I had absolutely no prior experience with circus arts and did not know of the possibility of it being used as a healing method for individuals afflicted by trauma. I studied at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, an excellent classical music conservatory, and their holistic approach to academic music was very inspiring to me, as were the incredible professors that I met there, including Dr. Nikolaus Hohmann and David Garner. I graduated in 2013 and came across Sirkhane Social Circus School by accident a few years ago and started following and observing their process on social media. Consistency, muscle memory, focus, repetition, and internalization are essential factors of circus arts as well as music. However, circus artists can practice with little to nothing. This is very different from music, which requires an established environment and instruments.

Considering the communities that we are working with near the Turkish-Syrian border, the presentation of arts is extremely different than more privileged societies, such as Western countries. If the presentation is dry and traditional, the level of engagement among our type of audience diminishes significantly. For example, the performance of a Mozart Sonata might seem boring and not engaging for our audience, but when it is combined with performance acts, such as circus, dance, or puppetry, in addition to projections on the 1,500-year-old walls of Dara Ruins in Mesopotamia and designed lighting, the experience immediately transforms into something powerful that can significantly improve their life conditions. This type of performance is far more cathartic for people who are desperately in need of a collective moment of release. I am even working on a composition in which a choreographed circus performance by our children is incorporated as a method of self-expression synchronized with the music. I am still learning and experimenting.

THESE CHILDREN STRUGGLE TO PRESERVE CHILDHOOD IN THE FACE OF LOSS, CHILD MARRIAGE AND LABOR, AND POOR INTEGRATION INTO TURKEY’S LANGUAGE AND EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. FLYING CARPET FESTIVAL AND MÜZIKHANE GIVES STORY-TELLING SKILLS SO THESE CHILDREN CAN EXPRESS THEMSELVES IN MEANINGFUL WAYS. WHAT ARE RECURRING THEMES OF THE STORIES THESE CHILDREN TELL, AND WHAT SURPRISES YOU IN THEIR SELF-EXPRESSION?

Storytelling as a life skill or as an artistic expression tool is an incredibly powerful tool for the children and can be reflected through music, circus, dance, photography, and art. But from a larger perspective, engaging children in an artistic effort which has been carved out of nothing and grown into a larger collaborative effort develops a sense of identity and strong inner beauty inside those children, which is reflected in many aspects of their daily lives. The main qualities of child’s art are a pure passion for life, a strong desire to be heard, and a desire to be singled out as a unique individual. Children normally capture the world through the lenses of their families and their communities, and when they regularly attend our centers and meet our artists, another stream of individuality starts to grow inside them, which offers them the option of being different and weird, the option of preserving their strangeness and extending their boundaries.

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Flying Carpet Festival–Photo by Eleni Papadoulou

FLYING CARPET FESTIVAL INCORPORATES SOCIAL CIRCUS PEDAGOGY; MÜZIKHANE (HOUSE OF MUSIC) IS DESCRIBED AS A SOCIAL MUSICAL SCHOOL, AND SIRKHANE (HOUSE OF CIRCUS) IS A SOCIAL CIRCUS SCHOOL FOUNDED BY AN ARTIST AND SOCIAL WORKER, PINAR DEMIRAL. WHAT DOES “SOCIAL” MEAN HERE, AND WHERE HAVE YOU FOUND FERTILE EDGES BETWEEN ARTISTIC PRACTICE AND CLINICAL WORK?

I think what we mean by “social” is the integration of arts into a society, where they can function as a holistic method for the residents who have suffered from traumatic experiences. I believe that the roots of performance arts lie in creating a collaborative effort towards beauty, the creation process of which is extremely cathartic for both artists and audiences but in different ways. That is what I call a successful experience/piece of art. In societies such as the ones where we are working, these moments of beauty and catharsis are extremely rare to non-existent due to lack of access. Also, as a platform for social arts, our centers provide an opportunity for a child to be involved in this process and be a part of a collaboration. What is intriguing for me in this process is to come up with creative musical solutions to engage musically untrained children, sometimes even with no knowledge of reading and writing, in a meaningful creative process. My friends and I came up with numerous solutions of such kind to engage children in our dedicated sets at the festival.

What I seek in my composing process which is similar to Flying Carpet Festival, is to reflect and capture stories that already exist in my surroundings and find the closest thing to a balance between educating the audience and engaging them fully in an immersive magical experience. This process goes back to the roots of the word “magic” in Zoroastrianism, the ultimate goal of which is keeping the fire of hope burning for thousands of years. The arts are there to bring hope and relief to human societies in my view, so I think providing and sustaining hope is that fertile edge that you are talking about.

THE SCHOOL CULTIVATES EACH CHILD’S INNATE BEAUTY AND CONFIDENCE VIA A “NON-POLITICAL, NON-RELIGIOUS, AND NON-IDEOLOGICAL METHOD,” BUT YOU HAVE ALSO HAD A BEAUTIFUL COLLABORATION COMPOSING A SACRED CHORAL WORK FOR THE AFGHAN NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MUSIC (ANIM). HOW DO YOU NAVIGATE RELIGIOUS DIALOGUE AND TRANSCENDENT EXPRESSION IN THESE COMPLICATED CONTEXTS?

I think purity, in the way that children imagine it, is far more sacred than how religion portrays divinity. Adding any flavor of organized ideology like religion or politics to a piece such as the one you mentioned can diminish the transcendent effect of their voices, which by themselves are effective and striking enough. The text for the piece was also based on three lullabies from three different regions of Iran, and anyone can connect with the idea of a lullaby and the divinity behind it.

This process very much resembles our work in Mardin, which is required to be non-political, non-religious, and non-ideological for it to sustain through governmental changes in a geo-politically unstable area. Universal humanity and honesty are the values that we encourage among our children at Sirkhane and Müzikhane.

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Flying Carpet Festival–Photo by Eleni Papadoulou

YOU HAVE COMMENTED ON HOW THE FLYING CARPET FESTIVAL RESET YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON MUSIC-MAKING, PRIVILEGE, AND ETHICAL IMPULSES. IT SEEMS MANY WESTERN MUSICIANS DESIRE TO BE MORE USEFUL, BUT STRUGGLE WITH INTEGRATING THEIR PERSONAL AMBITION WITH ACTUAL SOCIAL NEEDS. WHAT CANDID SUGGESTIONS WOULD YOU OFFER WESTERN MUSICIANS IN THEIR ARTISTIC PRACTICES, CAREERS, AND SYSTEMS?

I recommend that my friends and colleagues expand their view of themselves and try to see how effective they can be in more deserving communities, if effectiveness and social awareness is what they seek in their artistic career. Forming a social or political opinion in one’s art without being in touch with reality seems superficial to me. 

The world of today has changed immensely compared to the time where music was solely performed at opera houses, gigantic theatres, and concert halls. There is a large population of the world who have little-to-no access to cultural opportunities or any notion of beauty, and this is where the majority of horrendous events such as war and terrorism occur. Children growing up in these areas have no means of expressing themselves except through violence and terrorism ,which if you think about it, are perverted forms of expression, as well.

My advice to other artists is to not get stuck in what the arts establishment dictates to them and ignore what is expected of them by their friends, parents, colleagues, teachers and the previous generation of artists. How about starting something TRULY new, stupidly idealistic, and exactly as you imagine the world should be in your dreams? This, in my opinion, puts one’s artistic ambitions and the social needs of their communities in line with each other and creates a healthier artistic process more in touch with humanity.

In the end, I would like to mention that you also have always a place with us if you’d like to join our festival next year: www.flyingcarpetfestival.org

AUTHOR

LANA NORRIS

Lana Norris is a music journalist and collaborative pianist based in New York City. She has a background in sacred music and religious studies, and brings an interest in diplomacy to contemporary concert music.

Open Call For Flying Carpet Festival 2020 Is Now Open!

Sahba Aminikia’s Flying Carpet Children Festival

From SFCM Newsroom: https://sfcm.edu/newsroom/sahba-aminikias-flying-carpet-children-festival

Two years ago, 38-year old Iranian-born composer Sahba Aminikia ’13 decided to leave a secure teaching job in San Francisco and, by kismet or intention, join the circus. He has not looked back on his decision to become artistic director of the Flying Carpet Children Festival in war-torn Mardin, Turkey, an ancient city in southeastern Turkey that is currently home to some 5,000 child refugees. The festival brings together distinguished international performers and composers, including several of Aminikia’s teachers and fellow students from SFCM, circus artists, multi-media producers, trance dancers, as well as traditional Kurdish musicians as part of an effort started by Sirkhane (Circus House), a Turkish non-profit offering free music classes and social circus workshops to children in schools and refugee camps. Founded in 2012 by visual artist and social worker Pinar Demiral, Sirkhane’s mission is “to serve as a catalyst for positive change in the lives of vulnerable children.” Aminikia credits Demiral’s work as the inspiration for his decision to launch the festival and later become Sirkhane’s musical director at its school in Mardin, where more than 3.5 million refugees have fled since the onset of the Syrian civil war. Demiral, he says, began her effort during the worst of the violence and conflict, when border cities were being bombed, and refugees were fleeing at the rate of a 1,000 per day. He learned of her work by chance, over drinks at a bar in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco, from a friend whose sister worked as a volunteer clown at a circus school in southern Turkey. Aminikia soon discovered they were looking for a music coordinator. “I had a few Skype calls with Pinar,” he says, “and she told me about the school, its structure and mission. She said she wanted a music festival and that if I wanted, this can be mine. Those were her exact words.” His own experience as an Iranian refugee was part of his decision to create the Flying Carpet Festival. During his senior year at SFCM, Aminikia returned to Tehran to visit family. He had recently been interviewed by the international public broadcasting agency Voice of America about a composition he had been writing. “That interview provoked many things,” says Aminikia. “When I got back to Iran, I was basically abducted in front of my parent’s house. They [Iranian security forces] took me to the desert and put a gun in my mouth. I come from a family who are followers of the Bahá’í religion, and this guy was telling me to say three times that I was a Bahá’í so he could shoot me. They were beating and forcing me to say it. Then he started pulling the trigger while the gun was in my mouth but there were no bullets inside. They beat me multiple times and emptied a pepper spray capsule in my mouth and left me in the middle of the desert. I woke up and couldn’t really see anything, just this haze of light. Somehow I found my way to a guard kiosk, and they drove me back to Tehran. I was told I had 48 hours to leave Iran or they would come and kill every member of my family. It was very traumatic. The only good thing was that when I woke up in the desert I could hear this music in my head. It was the first movement of Shostakovich’s second string quartet. It was very strange. Maybe it’s the human brain’s function that fights what’s happening and tries to replace it with something beautiful—that treasure and jewel in your mind that you always have to keep.”

The defining moment in his life, Aminikia calls it the starting point for his later realization that “it was ok to go to Turkey and work for children. I am as much a foreigner in Mardin as you would be. I don’t speak Turkish. I don’t speak Arabic. But I just wanted to do something. We need to learn how to defend the rights of people who are not necessarily our people.” As he told a KQED Arts interviewer, “I can be the guy who’s at the border receiving people from the other side.” The experience informed Aminikia’s creative life as well. In 2017, as an artist in residence for the Kronos festival, he composed Music of Spheres, a sacred work featuring voices from the children’s choir of the Afghan National Institute of Music (ANIM), that nation’s first music school. “It was a remote collaboration with them,” he says. “I was so inspired to work with children, particularly those who had been traumatized and were experiencing war and violence every day.” Founded in Kabul by ethnomusicologist Dr. Ahman Sarmast, himself the survivor of a Taliban suicide bomber attack, ANIM serves Afghanistan’s most disadvantaged children, including orphans and street vendors. Aminikia described Music of the Spheres as a lullaby without borders. As choral texts, he adopted traditional lullabies in three distinct dialects of Persian, the language spoken both in Iran and Afghanistan. “I used them to bring the voices of Kronos Quartet, the ANIM Girls Choir, and the San Francisco Girls Chorus together in order to create a human experience in which these passionate musicians can connect to one another from across the oceans for us to hear even for a short period of time, and even through a virtual world.” Shortly after that work’s premiere at SFJAZZ, Aminikia made his first trip to Mardin to see the circus school and travel to its three centers in towns along the Turkish-Syrian border. In Nusaybin, decimated by bombings in the warfare with ISIS, Aminikia began recording voices of children singing in the streets while tanks patrolled the city. After he finished, more kids surrounded his car, begging him to record them. “I was encountering children asking for something, every single one of them wanted to sing first. So there was this huge need. And it created a conflict in me. Here I am working as a Middle Eastern Iranian composer in San Francisco, and that’s a great experience, but at the end of the day I always felt that I could easily be replaced by anyone else. And there’s this situation happening in this part of the world, where music and art and beauty are needed the most.” So in May 2018, Aminikia and Demiral began organizing the festival. In the first year, they won a $100,000 grant from the U.S. Embassy. The idea was to create an international artistic platform for artists in residence to work with the children in Mardin. “The environment and the place itself,” says Aminikia, “has this quality that grows you into something else. Maybe a more advanced version of yourself because you are working with people who are in extreme need, children who have experienced trauma and extreme violence. So in the first year, I mostly reached out to my friends from SFCM that I used to study and work with, including composers Luciano Chessa [Music History and Literature faculty] and Aleksandra Vrebalov ’96. They immediately accepted.” Some 25 artists came from around the world to form a collective that toured different parts of the region giving intensive workshops, leading rehearsals and performances in villages where, as Aminiki explains, culture and any kind of educational experience are rare. The goal was to create a piece of art or music with children and have that performed in several places. The experience was transformative for the children as well as the artists. For his part, Aminikia organized a children’s choir in Nusaybin to sing the traditional Kurdish song Le Dine. In recruiting the children, consistency and collaboration were essential parts of the pedagogy. “They had to come twice a week,” says Aminikia. “And we set an objective so that by the festival they had to be ready to perform six or seven songs.” Aminikia and cellist Helen Newby ’15, a member of the Amaranth String Quartet, which had performed one of his works at the 2017 Kronos Festival, gave workshops and ran rehearsals for the mostly middle school children in the choir, which has now grown to 16 members. Given the language and cultural barriers, it was a challenge for the artists as well. Everyone had to throw out their artistic and pedagogic playbooks. At one performance, Aminikia had SFCM’s Luciano Chessa perform with a traditional Kurdish dengbej singer. Dengbej is an ancient Kurdish song tradition whose melismatic bards (poets) travelled from village to village, singing ballads and epics that preserved Kurdish cultural traditions and historical memory. “I paired the dengbej singer up with Chessa who is a completely avant-garde composer,” says Aminikia, “and he created this beautiful improvisation with five or six bells, which the shepherds use there for the animals.” For this year’s festival, Aminikia added more circus performers, acrobats, fire dancers, trapeze artists, jugglers, and choreographers performing with classical music and hula hoops in villages where there is often no electricity or stages. To create an overall performance narrative, Aminikia used Sufi poet Attar’s 12th century classic, Conference of the Birds. “We tried to incorporate many artistic layers in the performance, and that is the whole premise of the festival. We don’t just bring entertainment. We bring serious art with an educational perspective to children who are most in need. Normally, they never have access to anything like this.” Aminikia hopes to sustain this volunteer-based artistic collective both as an ongoing event and for the impact it has had on refugee children. “As musicians,” he says, “many of us graduate from conservatories, and we learn how to attend auditions. We learn how to write compositions, but one thing we forget is that each and every one of us has extraordinary power to make a change in our surroundings. It’s almost our duty to do so.” To learn more about Sirkhane and the Flying Carpet Children Music Festival, visit https://muzikhane.org/fcf

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