Rumi Music Peace Project: ‘ONE WITH THE BELOVED’

Shervin Boolorian’s goal of creating the new album ‘One with the Beloved’ is to begin raising awareness through a worldwide music tour and workshop, press conferences, blogs, community forums and storytelling events which will encourage new dialogue and greater understanding between the Middle East and Western world. The project aims to bridge this growing cultural divide using world famous Persian poet, Rumi’s universal message of peace as a main inspiration and influence.

The album breaks new ground with a unique concept, offering the world’s first Sufi chant (Zikr) in a Sub Saharan African style, accompanied by the Kora and additional meditation instruments that deliver Western and Eastern flavoured melodies and percussion.

Most of these songs are drawn from Rumi’s works which explore the mystical linkages between nature, divinity, and the human heart. Some are relaxing heartsongs and others more rhythmic and upbeat Zikr chants. 

Shervin says about the project: “This Rumi influenced project is particularly close to my own heart, after my own experiences as an Iranian refugee migrating to the UK in 1978. I was only three when I left Iran, my country of birth, and joined the many millions who no longer had an official nation state to call home.

I have always seen Rumi as a huge source of personal inspiration. Rumi’s experience of being displaced from his homeland within the then-Persian civilization because of war reflects the story of many, including myself, and is a call for us all to put our humanity first. The story of my newest album is a reflection of this kind of journey, going from a very alienated and troubled place to one of inner peace guided by the Sufi poet’s wisdom.

I feel that a sacred music project drawing from Sufi texts in Rumi’s original language will create something new for people to think about in terms of Iran, Islam and the Middle East and its clear to me this Sufi poet’s voice easily and effectively crosses faith, nationality and ideology. Rumi’s popularity is surging just when the world’s relationship with the Islam and the Middle East seems at its lowest point and I see this as a paradox and an opportunity.”