‏Javad Badi‘-zada

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Badi‘zada, Sayyid Javad (1900-1978). Vocalist and composer. Born into a religious family most of whose members were endowed with sweet singing voices, he first studied music and classical singing (avaz) with his father, Mirza Muhammad Riza Badi‘ and his maternal uncle, Sayyid al-Wa‘izin. Having made a name for himself in his youth in Tehran, he was the only vocalist who composed many of the songs recorded on gramophone records during the years 1925-1938. To make gramophone recordings, he accompanied Abu’l-Hasan Saba and Murtaza Mahjubi to Beirut, Mahdi Khalidi and Dilkash to India, and Isma‘il Sarimi to Germany. He was an highly educated and cultured vocalist who could speak both Arabic and French.  He was also the son-in-law of Riza Quli Khan Nawruzi (d. 1922), the famous vocalist and tumbak instrumentalist of the Qajar period. Badi‘zada worked in the administrative department of the National Consultative Assembly of Iran.

Although Badi‘zada was nearly sixty years of age at the establishment of the Gulha and was gradually desisting from all public singing activities, nonetheless, he was consulted about the performance of a number of Gulha programmes and some of the songs composed by him or others in his youth were adjusted and performed anew in the Gulha. The most well-known of these includes Rafti u baz-amadi (“You Departed and Came Back”) with the recitation of Isma‘il Navvab Safa. In addition to a collection of three gramophone records, a CD entitled Taranaha-yi Badi‘zada (Mahur, Tehran 1383/2004) containing his most famous songs, his memoirs entitled Gulbang-i Mihrab ta bang-i mizrab (“From the Call of the Pulpit to the Sound of Plectrum,” edited by Sayyid ‘Ali Riza Mir‘alinaqi) have been released. He was a vocalist well-versed in literature who also possessed a talent for musical composition. It was on the basis of his works that the study of Persian folklore music was established in Iran.