Monika Jalili and NoorSaaz burst upon the world music scene in 2005 with their eponymous CD mingling Persian folk standards with love songs from the thriving pop scene of pre-revolutionary Iran in the 1960s and 1970s. NoorSaaz is a portmanteau word combining "Noor" meaning light with "Saaz" meaning both creator and musical instrument. The response to both the CD and live performances by the group has been tremendous, including over 350,000 hits on the webcast of NoorSaaz's concert from Trinity Church in Manhattan in late 2005.

The NoorSaaz material is a far cry from your training and musical background. How does a classically trained singer with a vocal performance degree from the Manhattan School of Music end up singing this repertoire?

I think it fell in my lap. There was this Iranian musician in New York. He was the santour [a Persian instrument similar to a dulcimer] teacher of a friend of mine. I was at my friend's house one day, and she told her teacher that I was a singer (I was doing musical theater then.) He asked me to sing, so I sang him one of my songs, and he was very complimentary. About a month later, he rang me with a proposal. He asked that if he could teach me a couple of Persian folk songs, would I be willing to perform with him for a NowRouz [Persian New Year] concert at the Great Neck Public Library? He knew my husband was Iranian and that I wasn’t. I told him I didn't know the language, I didn't know anything. He said he'd teach me. So that's how it began. He taught me about four or five folk songs.

Were any of the folk songs in dialect?

Yes. It was extremely difficult. Neither my husband nor my mother-in-law could help me with some of the linguistic issues – the songs were in Azeri and Lori dialects (amongst others), so I had to trust my teacher on the pronunciations and meanings of the texts. The concert was packed with hundreds of Iranians who all knew these songs, and I was doubly nervous as a foreigner singing in front of them. My teacher accompanied me on piano, but we hadn't rehearsed enough, and I felt that I didn't really get the rhythm, the style or the language. I had to perform the concert with the music and the translations in front of me. I got through it, but then I put the songs away and told myself this is too difficult.

What drew you back to this music?

About three months later I went into a studio to record myself, in order to see what I wanted to work on. My husband suggested I take some of the Persian songs with me as well. I spent about an hour in a studio, putting down a-capella tracks including the Persian folk songs. Without the pressures and deadlines of performance, I could take the time to feel the music in my voice. So I put some tracks on a CD, and I shared them with my husband's family, whose response was very positive and encouraging. While I was visiting my father-in-law, he introduced me to popular love songs from pre-revolutionary Iran, and told me that he could hear me singing that material too. I knew that if I were to continue, I would have to do some intensive language study, which wasn't really a problem as I loved Iranian culture and it wasn't a novelty, as I'd married into it. So I started working on the words, the phonetics, and the translations with my in-laws. Then, an Iranian friend, Homayoun Beigi, who plays the tar [a Persian triple-stringed instrument], started working with me on the songs.

How did you get back into public performance?

The two of us got invited to do performances at NowRouz celebrations, at the Bowery Poetry club and other venues. I was building my repertoire, and we were doing well, and the audience response was great, very moving. But Homayoun could only perform in his spare time, so I realized that if I wanted to do this full-time I needed to have my own group, because we'd get invitations to perform, and because of his schedule he couldn't join me, and I'd have to frantically find a substitute and spend all my time rehearsing from scratch. Also, as I started getting more comfortable with the music, I became more creative with it, translating verses into English, and I thought this could be real "world music," and introduce a whole new audience to these songs and this culture. And I knew I needed my own ensemble to do so.

How did the group get together? Did you know the musicians from before?

No, I didn't know any of them before. Via craigslist I found Megan Weeder (violin/kamanche [a bowed Persian string instrument]), who is American but has a lot of experience with Persian music, and was as passionate about the idea as I was. Through her various connections, we found the rest of the ensemble.

NoorSaaz: Megan Weeder, Monika Jalili, Mavrothis Kontanis, Timothy Quigley and Nathan Dillon.

I find it remarkable that none of your group is Iranian, though the end result certainly sounds like the real thing. Am I right in thinking that they all had previous experience/training with Persian music?

Not all of them have a Persian music background. As I mentioned our violinist does, but the rest did not. Our oud [a lute-like stringed instrument] player Mavrothis Kontanis' background is in Greek and Turkish music, which definitely comes through in his playing. Our percussionist Timothy Quigley has trained with various different people, and many people hear a strong Arabic influence in his style. Nathan Dillon, our guitarist, has a Western classical, jazz and rock-n-roll background.

Did any Iranian musicians express any interest in the group?

I did meet some, but they were mostly pursuing their own careers, whether in traditional or modern/pop contexts, so it was never a right fit. I didn’t plan on the ethnic background of the group turning out the way it did.

There is something about the sound of the band that, despite its heterodox mélange of instruments and people, comes through as Iranian, even though technically it's not an "authentic" sound.

It's not supposed to be. Our music is authentic in the sense of genuine, in our complete embrace of the material. But we don't replicate a past tradition, whether classical or folk.

But neither does it sound Westernized to my ears. There is a chamber-like sparseness and simplicity in the arrangements that directly links to the classical Persian tradition. Even the guitar sounds like a natural fit.

Iranian audiences love the performances, but some do come up to me after concerts and voice their concern that the end result is not "Persian". They don't like the oud, complain about the "Arabic" style of the percussion, and tell me that I'm not singing the songs the way they were originally done. And I try to explain that my goal is not to emulate and copy the originals.

How do you arrive at your arrangements of the songs? I doubt you have access to sheet music for the material in the United States.

I'm sure in Iran some of the stuff exists on paper, but for us none of it did. I try to get the most original recording of any song that I can. We transcribe from the recordings – one of my band members is excellent at transcription. Then as a group we come up with the arrangements. Each arrangement takes a while, because we don't plan them, we play through the songs, ideas pop up as we play, and the end result comes together from these working sessions and rehearsals.

Do the arrangements change in different performances?

Introductions and instrumental solos are always improvised. The band never repeats material exactly the same way. My vocal part doesn't change – how many measures and bars I'll sing stays constant.

Your musical education and training is in the classical, Western tradition, including song and concert repertoire. Do you think you sing the NoorSaaz material differently?

I think so, though some people might disagree. It's possible that without my being aware of it something comes through from my training with my teacher, Beverly Peck Johnson, who was incredible. But, much of it I don’t think about anymore, the technical stuff that I used to be so focused on. I was so prim and proper, and all that rigidity I can’t stand anymore. I'm sure a lot of the training has carried over; it has to. Obviously, I'm not thinking in a Persian way when I sing the material – but I love the material, and I hope that comes through in my singing.

Is the core audience Iranian, or is it expanding?

It does depend on the performance venue. A large percentage of our audience is Iranian, but there is a non-Iranian audience as well. I always do a spoken introduction to each song during the concerts. For some songs I do a poetic translation and do a recitation before I sing. I sing verses in English or French in certain songs. At our concert in Montreal, I sang a song in Farsi first, and then I sang the entire song again in French with a slightly different rhythmic feel. It really worked with this piece, though not every song works in a different language. Ultimately, I'm trying to get as vast an audience as possible to fall in love with this music the way I did.

A great boost for NoorSaaz was the Trinity Church webcast of your concert in October 2005, which continues on their website and has had hits from all over the world, including thousands from Iran. Did the huge reaction to the webcast surprise you?

I knew it would be telecast, but I didn't think too much about it. It was a lunchtime concert in the middle of the workweek, so there wasn't the largest audience at the church. Three weeks later I received an amazing email from a listener in Switzerland, and a few more followed. Then my brother told me I was named "Iranian of the Day" at Iranian.com, and that the page included a link to the concert. And then all of a sudden emails started flowing in for months, and then invitations to perform. It was all so unexpected, emotional and exciting, and things started happening a lot faster than we thought it would.

What does the future hold for NoorSaaz?

Definitely another CD. Since the last CD, we've expanded our repertoire quite a bit, so I'm hoping we'll go in the studio soon and put many of those songs down. They're still in the category of folk and love songs. In terms of long-term goals, we've thought about composing our own material, including possibly setting poetry from young Iranians living in Iran today.

Have you been approached about performing in Iran?

Yes, there have been suggestions. There is a great nostalgia for this kind of music in Iran nowadays, and someone from Iran told me that in today's climate we could possibly fill stadiums. But a woman can only sing in public with an all-female ensemble for an all-female audience, so that doesn't quite work for our group! I would love to go at some point.

To learn more about Monika Jalili and NoorSaaz, please visit www.noorsaaz.com.