Rojin Sharafi is a musician, composer, sound artist & sound engineer well known for her music that conflates the genres noise, electronic, metal and avant-garde. She draws inspiration from her Iranian roots in using the Santur – a hammered dulcimer popular in traditional Iranian music – for her sound generation and her performances. Rojin Sharafi’s music often builds on microtonal and polyrythmic structures. In 2014 Rojin moved to Austria in order to study at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna and has since chosen Vienna as her homebase. She is also a multi-disciplinary artist who has composed music for the silent movie from 1937 “Warschauer Zitadelle” for the international film festival Viennale, is working together with architects in order to find the intersection of music and architecture and has done the sound-design for several experimental films.
So far she has released the albums “Urns waiting to be fed” (2019) & “Zangaar” (2020) on the Iranian label Zabte Sote and cooperated with the Black Page Orchestra, Ensemble Phoenix Basel and the Ensemble Platypus.
… how & why:
I had heard a lot about Rojin over the last few years and I was very much interested in her music. But it wasn’t until 2020 that I finally saw Rojin play live at the Sonic Territories Festival and I was totally flabbergasted by her performance. The way she used the Santur – an instrument I had only known in the context of traditional Iranian music – and how she combined these acoustic sounds with industrial noisy soundscapes and heavy beats surprised me. Almost two years later I asked if she would be willing to record for Wien33 and luckily she sais yes! The result are 33 one-sided vinyls each featuring a live version of one of two songs…