Saturday, my family and I went to see Afshin, a famous Persian pop star, in concert. I never really gave Persian music a chance, so I decided to open my mind and see if he was any good. The concert was at Bar Beach, Roslyn; admission was free. When we drove through the opening gate the parking lot, which was as vast as two football fields, was packed. I was able to hear the faint sounds of the setar and kamancheh, musical instruments that originate in the middle-east.
When we finally found a spot, my mother pulled out a video recorder and a Kodak camera from the trunk; she never usually gets this excited. The sand was barely visible, as people lay down on their towels all across the beach. It was close to sunset, and the sight of the blue-orange sky above the stage was epic. Suddenly, a bright light flashed on stage and Afshin walked out. If I said the crowd went wild, it would be an understatement; the crowd seemed rampantly untamed. The crowd began dancing to his opening song, Khoshgel, which means “Beautiful” in Farsi.
I danced along, snapping my fingers to the ethnic beat, wiggling my knees like they were jell-o. The crowd was full of Persians, and not one blonde person was in sight. About an hour into the performance, I was getting hungry, so I checked out the food stand. Baba Ghanoush, Humus, Tadig, Sabzee, and other traditional Middle-eastern cuisines were being sold. I ended up buying a Shwarma Laffa. At around 1:30am, the crowd began to die down, and so my family decided it was time to leave. The experience was memorable, and when I went home I downloaded some of Afshin’s albums on iTunes.
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