Hadi Pakzad
Hadi Pakzad (1982–2016), known by his initials “H-P” (ه-پ), was one of the artists who began writing fiction and composing rock music in their teens. He was born in December 1982 in Mashhad, Iran. On Friday, 27 May 2016, we learned with deep sorrow that H-P had taken his own life; nothing was made public about the cause of his death or his reasons for leaving life.
He came to music free of classical poetry and philosophical writing. Most of his lyrics are visual and take the form of short, ambiguous plays.
He recorded his first studio album in 2002 and went on to release seven concept albums, plus one official selection, Darkness. The musical ideas and the lyrics, the overall themes and the stories of all of them were his own.
One of his defining traits was his generosity: the income from his artistic work was given to charities.
The reason he gave for staying out of the official, licensed music market was choice.
He said: “Underground, I have the chance to choose my audience; in the official, licensed system I only have the chance of being chosen.”
In His Own Words
Hadi Pakzad's message on his Telegram channel, 9 May 2016:
Hello, dear friends. I'm Hadi Pakzad, to whom you have always been kind. Over the past 14 years I have released 8 albums and about 80 tracks, each of which had something to say in its own time, and a great deal of hard but quiet work went into them. And I have fans who keep writing to me here and there, “So where's the new album?” — and I promise you, with a broken heart I promise, that some of these good friends haven't even heard many of the works. Apart from the fact that I myself never had an active publicity policy, this damage comes from a culture of listening to music “in bulk” instead of “album by album”. Fortunately we have Telegram these days, and we can very easily get the songs, listen to them, or recommend them to someone. Tonight about 35 selected songs from my work of these 14 years were posted on my Telegram channel, and like any other artist I hope they will be heard. And at least once, independently, under the title of Hadi Pakzad's works, a new album is on the way too: with a licence if I can; if not, without one :)
Sincerely, Hadi Pakzad
On the licence for the album Darkness (published on the Telegram channel, 19 May 2017):
In late autumn 2014, when the cultural climate had become a little more welcoming with the arrival of Mr Rouhani's government, I was recording one of those “below-hope” tracks in a studio when I met a music programmer named Reza Karimitabar, who made me a favourable promise about getting a licence for an album and live performances of my work. I had only one condition: that nothing in the lyrics or the texture of the music would change; and as Reza walked out the door, I was sure that by stating this condition we had signed an unwritten agreement never to see each other again! Yet a few months later he called me one day and said he had got the licence for the lyrics; and, well, good news of the artistic kind… it felt good.
Book
Hadi Pakzad wrote the story Ahali-ye Noh (The Residents of Nine) in 2010. It was published as a book after his death, in spring 2017, and the full text (in Persian) is available in this site's library.
Press and interviews
Perfection or Decay, From Eloquence to Disability
An Elegy of Music Buffs in a World Without Pakzad
A Conversation with Hadi Pakzad on the Occasion of the Album Darkness
A Self-Tormentor Who Errs with Precision