Golnar Shahyar aka. GolNar
Golnar Shahyar is an Iranian/Canadian vocalist, composer, educator, and activist based in Vienna and Berlin. A true master vocalist whose ability to combine different music styles and cultures are so natural and effortless that one hardly notices the complexity of her compositions, improvisations, and singing. After getting her bachelor's degree in Biology in Canada, she moved to Vienna in 2008 to becoming a musician. Her international career took off quickly while finishing her bachelor's degree in singing, guitar, and music education at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. For the last 10 years, she has performed and collaborated with numerous musicians worldwide as a bandleader, composer, and performer. She is also the co-founder of WE:Shape, a platform for advocating inclusion & equity in music. The core of her artistic work is quality, innovation, personal expression, communication, empathy, and advocating social justice.
No submissions for Beyond Music Project Volume 4.
The lyric of this song was inspired by an Afghan mother and her six-month-old daughter, Bahar. I met them in a refugee camp. The mother's eyes, though devastated by the traumas of the road, suddenly lit up with life and power as she told me about an incident on a boat where she thought she is going to lose her baby. She held Bahar tight with so much joy and in the midst of devastation and despair, I felt how this motherly love could overcome it all. The feeling was raw, intuitive, and universal. It was elegantly heartbreaking but hopeful.
This piece is about the desire to feel free. A kind of freedom that is experienced in the body. A kind that comes through self-love. Also, a kind that is the result of transformation through our old habits. Habits that are the root of so many of our conflicts. The desire to overcome the conflicts, by seeing the boundaries of fear, hatred, and pain and find a way to go through them with communication. Music is one of the strongest forms of communication. This song, therefore, floats like a mountain river to bring the energy for transformation.
This song expresses the courage to embrace our most powerful selves. A power that is awakened through conflicts we all might find ourselves trapped into. Conflicts, sometimes so complex and chronic, that could consume our life energies generation after generation. In facing conflicts we tend to get small and suppress our life force. Here we embrace this force. Not to be destructive but rather be transformative. As a way out of the conflict, we rearrange and reconstruct by being our most powerful selves. With compassion and courage. So, Let the
No submissions for Beyond Music Project Volume 2.
No submissions for Beyond Music Project Volume 1.