Dariush
Dariush Eghbali has been singing since 1970, when he was put in front of Iran's television cameras at nineteen; by 1977 the readers of a youth magazine had voted him the most popular singer in the country. Under the Shah he was imprisoned, and he has said since that it was for the political songs. He left Iran after the revolution and has recorded from Los Angeles ever since, more than two hundred songs over twenty-seven albums. In 2000 he stopped using heroin after decades, and made the recovery of other Iranians his second work through the Ayeneh foundation, which he set up for addicts and their families.
The political songs came first and cost him first: Jangal, Booye Gandom and Bonbast are the titles he names when he says why the Shah's police came for him. Dastaye To, from the same 1972 record as Cheshme Man, is the one Manoto television called the most enduring song in Iranian music, and after the revolution the songs kept coming from Los Angeles. The second work began in 2000, when he quit heroin and sang about it in Mojezeh-ye Khamoosh, the silent miracle; the Ayeneh foundation followed, with a website, radio and television programmes and seminars for addicts and their families. He is married to Venus Eghbali and a member of Amnesty International.
