About Memories of You (Portrait of Delkash) 2019 “Esmat Bagherpour Baboli” known as Delkash (1925- 2004) was born in Babol also known as “Orange Blossom City”, north-east of Tehran. She...
“Esmat Bagherpour Baboli” known as Delkash (1925- 2004) was born in Babol also known as “Orange Blossom City”, north-east of Tehran. She was the daughter of a cotton trader who had nine other children. She left home to study as a teenager and stayed with her older married sister in Tehran. It is not clear how she was discovered by the then music masters of the time, Abdolali Vaziri and Ruhollah Khaleghi with the latter naming her as Delkash which in Persian means delightful. Delkash started public singing in 1943 and with 40 hit songs and 370 recordings in her catalogue and number of movie appearances, she has made a permanent mark on the Iranian cultural scene. She was the first female actor that sang in her own voice in films which, at the time, was very rare right until the revolution of 1979. Delkash was the first woman to appear in drag, in the film “Top Dog” 1958; she dressed as “Jahel” (tough guy) singing alley ballads , gender bending so artfully that it gained national notoriety, as women impersonating men was frowned upon. However, she forged ahead and songs from the film track were aired on the radio and these soon became some of the most requested songs of its time.
Her inauguration into the world of music coincided with the Iranian famine of 1942/1943, a period of major starvation when Iran was occupied by the allied forces of Britain and the Soviet Union (on 9th of Sept 1943 Iran joined allied forces and declared war on Germany). She not only broke barriers as an Iranian woman performing for radio and in cinema but she was doing so very soon after the unveiling laws of 1936 of Reza Shah. This meant that at the time when most Iranian women were still afraid to go into the streets without their veils she was performing publicly.
Delkash was a formidable woman, a very passionate humanitarian, kind, humble and throughout her career she mentored, helped and promoted many female singers/ actors, but soon lost her own glow in Iranian Cinema. She therefore focused solely on a singing career, appearing in cabarets and concerts where she would perform into the early hours of the day. Known for her androgynous voice, her genre of music is that of classical and folk style. She also worked as a songwriter under the pen name of Niloofar and provided many of her contemporaries with ballads. Like many female performers in Iran she experienced difficulties in keeping her own agency and authority as she had to negotiate a conservative and male dominated scene. Unlike the male counterparts many of the female actors were not paid for their work and had to provide their own wardrobe. Performing in movies was considered by Delkash as an opportunity to reach wider audiences and to help with her record sales since television did not appear in Iran until 1958. In Oct 1998, at the age of 73, Delkash toured Europe and America and gave a number of concerts to standing ovations by her fellow countrymen. Delkash died in September 2004, at the age of 80, in Tehran and was buried in Emamzadeh Taher, a popular graveyard for artists. She had one son named Soheil. After her death her philanthropy and charity work became known to her followers.
The title of the work is a response to one of her songs “Bordi Az Yadam” (You’ve Forgotten Me) a song accompanied with Vigen one of the male pop stars of the time. The image shows Delkash sitting on the edge of a simple pot with a plant, this symbolises her down to earth character. The plant separates the night from the day, but she sits with her back to the darkness as the velvety black sky is dotted with only a few stars, and a half moon. The day part of the painting has a barren land with cacti. In Sokhanvari’s paintings a phallic like Cacti symbolises patriarchy, with another cactus nearest to her having its needles dangerously close to her flesh. The meaning of the painting is left to the viewer.
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