Spotlight on Artist Residencies: Introducing Roshi Nasehi

Tell us a bit about yourself and your work:
I am primarily a musician. Over the last 20 years I have made several records that embraced my Iranian and Welsh background, as well as performing live at various venues and festivals in the UK and further afield. I also got a British Council sound art commission in 2014 which took me to Kuwait for a month.

Alongside making records, I have many years’ experience of writing, performing or in some other way supporting music for a range of theatre shows. I think this has led me to try theatre-making myself and in 2023 I wrote and performed Ramalama Ding Dong, a meta-comic solo show inspired by my real-life experiences of racist slurs and casual racism, which combined elements of stand up, sound art, storytelling, singing and animation. I performed this show in London several times where it sold out, and also at other venues and festivals including the Edinburgh Fringe.

Tell us about the idea you’re exploring as part of the residency. Who are you working with?
I am thrilled and delighted to be awarded this residency from artsdepot to develop my new show The Agatha Christie Serial Killer Of Iran, which explores the under-told story of Mahin Qadiri, an Iranian murderess allegedly inspired by Christie’s classic crime stories. This will be a multi-media production that draws on storytelling, archive interviews, music, singing, sound-art and film to tell Mahin’s fascinating, politically charged story.

It is particularly gratifying to be telling this story at artsdepot, which is close to the area now known as “Little Tehran”, and I am looking forward to sharing bits of it with the local Iranian community as it develops. I have lots of experience of running creative community workshops and hope to run something along these lines which taps into the show’s themes and explores people’s feelings about the deeper issues behind them.

What are your inspirations / influences?
A lot of my work is semi-autobiographical, drawing on both my Iranian and Welsh background, but I also find myself tapping into aspects of the natural world and into other art forms like cinema. For example, David Lynch has been mentioned several times in reviews of my music, which is a great compliment. I have also really enjoyed collaborating with artists from other disciplines over the years- a very broad range of people from circus performers like Kaveh Rahnama to rock musicians like David Thomas from the cult band Pere Ubu!

What’s the best bit of advice about the industry / being an artist you have ever received?
In the year 2000 I worked as an usher in the Royal Festival Hall. One night the amazing Iranian-American singer-musician Sussan Deyhim did a double bill with Talvin Singh. I sneaked backstage to meet Sussan and she was really lovely. I talked about re-embracing Iranian music and culture as a young adult after rejecting it during my teenage years, and she said a lot of wise things about not judging your past self too harshly and giving yourself time to work things out around your identity, both in terms of how it feeds into your life as an artist but in general terms too. I’ve never forgotten this and was super flattered years later when a French magazine reviewed one of my records and kind of bracketed us together.

What’s been the best theatre show/music gig you’ve attended in the past 12 months?
I really enjoyed English by American-Iranian playwright Sanaz Toossi in the Kiln Theatre. It explores how language can both unite and disenfranchise people in a range of really touching, creative and clever ways.

What are you watching? What are you listening to? What are you reading?
Watching: I recently saw A Sudden Glimpse Into Deeper Things, director Mark Cousins’ stunning, poetic documentary about the Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. I had barely heard of her before perhaps because she has been largely written out of history, like so many other women artists. This film tells really helps you experience her art.

Listening: My dear friend and long-term musical collaborator Graham Dowdall died in June 2024. We worked together for 20-plus years and had a music project called Roshi featuring Pars Radio. His last record under his solo Gagarin project guise was called Komorebi, a lyrical Japanese term to describe the play of sunlight through trees. It has been a great comfort to listen to this record which is an outstandingly beautiful and uplifting final work from him.

Reading: Unsurprisingly, I am re-reading Lucy Worsley’s Agatha Christie biography. I think it is, rightly, becoming regarded as the definitive work on Christie. I also just finished Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You by Becky Holmes, a forensic piece of long-form journalism about online romance fraud. It makes for uncomfortable reading at times but it is often hilariously funny and deeply compassionate. I feel like someone could make a great stage show out of it… but not me because I have my hands nicely full with this show!