Shahram Shabpareh at The YouTube Theater

Saturday night I was at the YouTube Theater. Architecturally impressive, this structure is near the Forum and across from a park and a lake. The Acoustics are not the best, or at least they weren’t the two times I have been here. 

I rarely go to Persian concerts even when I was 12 years old living in the U.S. But now and then, my one Persian friend pushes me to take part in an Iranian event. So, I tag along, not sure what to expect and not recognizing most of the performers. This concert was all about Shahram Shabpareh aka the Iranian/Persian king of pop music. 

My friend had brought her self-defense ring. The first picture is how it normally looks. The second one is how it looks with the tiny blade open. 

She also brought a pepper spray. I was like, what for? She said, “you don’t know this crowd. If a fight breaks, I want us to be prepared.” Well, luckily, no one fought and all went by smoothly. 

There were 6000 people who were getting rowdy as they started to make loud noises because they wanted the concert to start. Shahram was running 45 minutes late which is not unusual for a Persian event. Once he started singing, there was a lady next to me who was dancing hard as her arms flailed all over the place, and I was concerned that during her excitement, she was going to knock my camera right off my hand onto the below balcony. 

Unlike the other times, this time I recognized the performer. This concert took me back in time to my cousin’s wedding when I was 26. At the time, one of my younger cousins was trying to get me to dance and I wasn’t in the mood. Then this performer walks off the stage, grabs my hand and makes me dance with him. I had no idea who he was, as the dance stage cleared, everyone circled around us and all cameras were focused on the two of us dancing to La Bamba. It turned out that I was dancing with the Iranian king of pop music, Shahram Shabpareh, a super humble and nice guy that I had the privilege of meeting once in my lifetime. The above music and lyrics is about Iran. Here is a small translation: You don’t know how I feel, I miss my homeland, On this foreign land, all I have is God, you have no idea what kind of journey I had to endure...

The above lyrics basically says: when my hands, need the warmth of another hand, when a happy moment does not arrive to me, you can make me happy, you can free me of my sadness, and set me free...

This was the last song that he played, and Saturday night was his last performance in Los Angeles. He has two more events coming up, one in Virginia and the other in Toronto before he retires. He wants to spend more time with his wife and his daughter. It was a tender evening as he cried twice because he was retiring and because he wished that someday he could return to Iran. You see, Iran changed a lot as it shifted from a civil government to a religious government after the revolution. And many Iranians find it difficult to want to go back and live under a different set of rules and regulations. Here is an abbreviation of the lyrics: In this life, love is fleeting, kindness is gone, where is a friend, cannot find one, all that is left is the thorn from a rose, what happens to spring, in the storm of love, I have been forgotten, the silence of this broken heart is my screams, now vay vay vay vay vay (sorry the word "vay" is hard to translate. It’s kind of like saying oh damn, damn, damn…)

So, there it is. My tiny effort to bring a bit of the Persian culture to my English speaking readers. And as for me, what is important is that there are these moments in life that we cannot replace. It happens once and it is important to have an awareness of it, like dancing with the Iranian king of pop music, or the time when I laughed so hard that tears poured out of eyes as my father told me a funny story, or the time when I attended David Beckham’s incredible last soccer game at the L.A Galaxy. I’m certain that everyone has these tiny moments in their life if they look back, and it is these moments and the moments that have not yet occurred that make life amazingly great and worthwhile.