Album: Ali Reza Ghorbani, Songs of Rebirth: Homage to Rumi (Accords Croises)

Rumi was a 13th-century Persian poet born in what is now Afghanistan, and his verses still inform culture across the Sufi Middle East.

There's a strong echo of the Azerbaijani mugham singer Alem Qasimov's style in Ali Reza Ghorbani's ecstatic flights, which is fitting, given the geographical proximity of the two countries, and their music's shared religious roots. But Ghorbani and his colleagues take it all in a new direction, sometimes in a symphony of low growls, sometimes in warm vocal-instrumental unison.