Golha Project Website

Iran Heritage Foundation

PARSA Community Foundation

Jane Lewisohn

The musical and literary repertoire of the programmes known generally as Golha, ‘Flowers [of Persian Poetry and Song]’ was a series of weekly radio programmes aired on Iranian radio between 1956 and 1979 which covered the entire history of classical as well as contemporary Persian poetry, giving expression to the whole gamut of traditional Persian music and poetry. The foremost and best musicians, vocalists, literary critics, poets and announcers performed on the programmes, thus providing a unique – and still the best and most poetically diverse – recorded collection of the classical corpus of Persian music and poetry made in the 20th century.

The Golha Project Website is a searchable encyclopaedia of Persian poetry and music with audio recordings of all of the Golha radio programmes, available for free to the general public. It comprises a database of more than 1000 hours of audio material, searchable by 18 different search criteria such as musical modes, instruments, poetic verse, poetic genre, singer, and songwriter names, etc. The website allows the visitors to go directly to specific sections within the audio programmes and start playing a song, a melody or a poem based on their search result. It also includes the transcripts of all the poetry declaimed or sung on the programmes, accompanied by biographies both in Persian and English of over 560 poets and 250 performers, as well as the musical notes for 700 ballads (tarana). This vast musical, literary and bibliographical archive is now available in perpetuity to a worldwide audience, providing music and poetry lovers, with a valuable research tool and learning resource, thus having a lasting impact on Iranian Studies. The archive can now be accessed through www.golha.co.uk.

The following film provides a good overview of the scope and capacity of the Golha Project Website:

We encourage you to help the future expansion of the project by making donations to the IHF and IHF America. Both foundations receive their funding from individual and business donations. Neither accepts funds from any government or political organisation. Please support this valuable project by clicking on the link below.