The Tombak Poet

Naser Farhangfar is perhaps the most distinctive and unique tombak player among many great musicians from Hossein Tehrani to the present day. His delicate nature, creativity, and intelligence have produced a collection of the best and most unique solo and ensemble tombak performances in the history of Iranian music. Farhangfar’s tombak playing had a special style that encompassed everything from hand placement on the instrument to various striking techniques such as the tombak, back, and rapid strokes, accompanying his playing with softness, delicacy, and skill, making it resemble poetry. Despite the great regret caused by his short life and his years of solitude, he composed many poems and songs and was also a skilled calligrapher. The book “The Tombak Poet” is a selection of Naser Farhangfar’s poems and songs, compiled, edited, and published by Arash Farhangfar and Mir Alireza Mirali Naghi, introducing Iranian music enthusiasts to another aspect of this great artist. Despite the immense sorrow he bore in the last years of his life, Farhangfar was witty and humorous in his poetry and songs, and simultaneously interested in epic and romantic themes. Thus, the poems and songs gathered in The Tombak Poet represent a worthy collection of his poetic life.