A Tunisian Oud master, vocalist and composer, Dhafer Youssef will be a participant in the 35th Fajr International Music Festival in Tehran.

Dhafer Youssef is a Tunisian Oud master, vocalist and composer born in November 19th, 1967. At the age of 6, he discovered the echo of his voice and its resonances. A few years later, he joined the local liturgical song troupe as a vocalist and then he started playing Oud at the youth center in Teboulba and was selected for orchestra. In Tunis, he joined the musical conservatory, but after a while he moved to Austria to study musicology, however found that he is not interested in academic training anymore. He finally meets Gerhard Reiter, the Austrian percussionist with whom he founded his first band, “Zeryab”. In 1996, his experiences in Vienna gave birth to his first album “Musafir”. Dhafer gained in maturity with the release in 1998 of “Malak” which blend of European jazz melodic structures a Mediterranean groove of a particular form. In 2001, he recorded “Electric Sufi, which was his first experiment with electronic music. Back to the studio in 2003, Dhafer Youssef recorded “Digital Prophecy” and as his music acquired more height, he was nominated twice in 2003 for the BBC Awards for World Music. “Divine Shadows” was his next album in 2005 that secured Dhafer a third nomination in 2006. Dhafer’s talent extends to the world of film music and he has outstanding performance in the soundtrack of “Black Gold” composed by the legendary James Horner in 2011 , “The Amazing Spider-Man” and also collaboration with Alberto Eglesias for “Gods and Kings” in 2014. In 2013, Dhafer Youssef releases acclaimed “Birds Requiem album accompanied by 100 concerts, over 50,000 records sold and performances by several orchestras including the London Symphony Orchestra. “Diwan of Beauty and Odd” with collaboration of the finest musicians the New York jazz scene was released 2016 in New York.

Indeed, he is today considered to be the most inventive Oud player, and a leader of the movement referred to as contemporary music, which fuses Eastern and Western music.