HUUUM

HUUUM is the live project of Omid Darvish, Rojin Sharafi and Álvaro Collao Leon, merging folk-influenced Iranian vocals with free jazz, ambience, electronic beats and impulses, bringing us dance music of an entirely new kind. 

HUUUM is synonymous with synthesis, openness, substance and avid noncompliance. Atypical rhythms and microtonal music, singing in multiple languages, sensitive improvization, and the interlacing of artforms and cultures – HUUUM leads with transcension and lands with unstoppable movement.
Both defying and bonding traditions simultaneously, HUUUM is reinventing our geopolitical musical landscape - via powerfully succulent vocals, deep-burrowing beats, clanging percussive effects and ever-moody reeds.
Together, the trio tackles the question of how to find a form of expression of one's own instrument for and within the sonic world of the respective other culture (e.g., the attempt to create pieces for the Serna - a Persian wind instrument - on the Westernoriginated instrument, the saxophone). The challenge is not small, nor is the outcome. The power of learning, unlearning and re-learning is a palpable tool and guiding light for the trio’s creative input and output. And the result, heard and felt by the listener, is intensely satisfying.

HUUUM is the living embodiment of the unknown, the re-learned, and the profoundly unapologetic - with nothing to stop it but the club’s last call.

Folk music from the future: The trio HUUUM combines traditional sounds from diverse regions of Iran with “western” playing styles and instrumentation, inspired by jazz and the electronic avant-garde. Omid Darvish sings in various dialects evoking a rich palette of colours and tones. He is accompanied by Rojin Sharafi on electronic instruments and Álvaro Collao Léon from Chile on the saxophone. With their music, their costumes and masks, the three artists navigate a field between tradition and modernity, between rites of the past and dances yet to come. At donaufestival, HUUUM present their debut album.

Visuals: TE-R