Saman Barzegar Interview, guitar player from Varte

Saman Barzegar Interview

Saman Barzegar is the guitar player from Varte. Varte started out their career in 1393 as a progressive band, consisting  of Reza Marzban, Aidin Pooladvand and Saman Barzegar.
Their debut album The inscribed tale was released last September which is now available everywhere.

1-Tell me about yourself and how did you make the band?

My name is Saman Barzegar, I started playing classic guitar in 1385 and after 3 or 4 years started playing electric guitar professionally. It was late 1393 that we started our band, “Varte” with my friend Reza Marzban. It’s been 3 years we’re working professionally .

2- How did you choose the name Varte for your band?

We had lots of names in mind. But didn’t agreed on any.One of the guys came up with Varte, we thought for a few days and thought it’s a good one. Since our genre is progressive and we all liked it.

3- What’s your genre? 

Our genre is based on Progressive and alternative themes. But most of our earliest single tracks are more alternative. But I could name “Antalcidas”? which is progressive. But on the whole we’re so open about genre.

4- Tell us about “ Inscribed tale” album?

It has 10 tracks which 4 of them are instrumental and the other 6 have Persian vocals. Our album’s main theme is historical.like each song is based on one specific period of Persian history.

5- What is your favorite track from the album?

Such a hard question! We’ve been working on our album for a year day and night. Might be a bit cliché, but our songs are really like our children!

-if it’s that hard you can choose 2 favorite 

_Yes I can pick 2, our 8th and the second track.The second one is the most significant song in our album.

6- which musicians inspire you?

There are lots of them. I can say what I mostly listen to. I like jazz a lot. Late 60’s and early 70’s progressive rock bands like King Crimson and Pink Floyd are my favorite. From 90’s bands, I like Opeth, Meshuggah and Tool.

7- what would you do if you weren’t a musician? 

If I wasn’t a musician… I can’t answer that! I wouldn’t do anything I guess! Because music is my life an everything.I also spend most of my free times doing music.

8-Do you think Farsi sounds OK on rock music ?

It is I guess, there are lots of great bands who do rock music in their own languages.
Take Rammstein as example, they’ve done great job writing German songs and as for us it’d be so weird to write songs about ancient Iran in English !

9-What’s your plan for the future?

Our album will be out in like two or three months, then we might do concerts in Kerman and Tehran.