Hossein Tehrani

Maestro Hossein Tehrani was born in 1912 in Tehran. He loved the sound of percussions, so once he decided to make an instrument himself. He made a hole at the end of a clay vase and covered the bigger mouth with skin and started playing his first strokes of tonbak on it.

His father did not wish Hossein to practice music, so he was able to practice only when his father was at work. According to his interviews he started learning tonbak seriously in 1929. In 1938 he became acquainted with the late Maestro Abolhasan Saba, the multi-instrumentalist Persian best known as a violinist, and this was an important point in his life.

After the establishment of Radio Tehran in 1940, he and some other artists collaborated with the radio. He was the first to write books and scores for tonbak which made this instrument more and more popular.

He was very kind, and always well dressed and smiling although he had lost one of his eyes while he was working in a technical workshop in his youth. That’s the reason he was always wearing dark glasses. After a long indisposition, he passed away in February 1974.

Maestro Tehrani playing tonbak
Video 49 Sec. 954 Kb

Train sound with tonbak
Audio 1:50 Min. 451 Kb