All posts by Naysan Naraqi. Browse Other Authors

Naysan is the editor of Baha'i Blog and he has worked in various avenues of media for two decades. He’s passionate about using the arts and media to support and explore the teachings of the Baha’i Faith and he has produced and collaborated on popular music projects like the "DawnBreaker Collective" and the successful Ruhi-inspired sequence of "MANA" albums. His experience as a producer for CNN was invaluable while working on a number of special projects for the Baha’i World Centre, including the "Building Momentum" and "Pilgrimage: A Sacred Experience" videos. If there’s a media-related Baha’i project out there, chances are that Naysan was involved with it somehow!

Visit Author's Website

Soul Food: Food for the Soul

, 7 Comments

It’s Sunday morning in the city of Melbourne, Australia, and a crowd of about 100 people gathers at the State Library of Victoria. Everyone’s eager to enter the auditorium, and they start lining up next to a sign labelled “Soul Food”. Everyone’s here because they’re hungry – but not for physical food, they’ve come to receive food for the soul.

Rated as one of the Top Ten things to do in Melbourne, Soul Food is a monthly event which has been running consistently for six years now. The program runs for about 40 minutes, and it features live readings from various faiths and philosophers woven together with beautiful imagery and live music.

I’ve been living in Melbourne for about three years now and Soul Food is definitely an event I’ve had locked in my calendar, so I decided to sit down with one of the organisers of the event, Nima Ferdowsi, and ask him about the initiative and its success. Continue reading →

Our 1,000 Facebook Fans Giveaway!

32 Comments

Baha’i Blog now has 1,000 fans on Facebook! We’d like to thank our amazing readers for their support and so we’re celebrating this milestone with some awesome music give-aways.

The Facebook Page is a great way to keep up-to-date with the latest Baha’i Blog posts. In addition, we also link to news articles, events and other happenings of interest to Baha’is around the world at least once every 24 hours!

All you have to do is “Like” the page to receive all our updates!

And if you’re not a Facebook user, just sign up to our mailing list and you’ll receive an email every time we post a new Baha’i Blog article. It’s that simple!

 

Want to win four awesome Baha’i CDs? Keep reading…

Continue reading →

New Songs Available for Ruhi Book 3, Grade 1 & 2

, , 5 Comments

The Ruhi Institute has made available for download, recordings of the songs contained in the new lesson plans for Grades 1 and 2 of the Teaching Children’s Class book.

These songs can be downloaded for free, and you can also download a page which contains both the lyrics and the chords for each song – so that’s pretty cool!

These materials can be used in both children’s classes and other educational activities, and The Ruhi Institute also permits the songs to be translated and recorded into various languages, provided that no recording be sold or used for commercial purposes in any way.

You can access the songs here: http://www.ruhi.org/resources/songs.php

5 Year Plan Talks by Tom Price

, 75 Comments

Baha’i music composer Tom Price recently gave a series of three talks about the Five Year Plan at the Tennessee Baha’i School. With his permission, Baha’i Blog is pleased to share with you the talks to stream from our site or to download – and best of all, it’s completely free!

The study of the 5 Year Plan is something we’ve all been encouraged to do, and we hope these talks will help you with this. We know that anyone who has ever heard Tom Price speak will be frantically clicking away at the download buttons, and for those of you who have yet to tune in to one of Tom’s talks, you’re in for a treat!

We hope you enjoy the talks and please let us know what you think in the comments section and feel free to share this post with your friends.

Happy Listening! Continue reading →

Baha’i Blog Quiz: Abdu’l-Baha’s Travels to the West

6 Comments

This year marks the centenary of Abdu’l-Bahá’s travels from Palestine to the West, where after a life of imprisonment, He arose to share Baha’u’llah’s message of peace and unity to the people of Europe and North America.

In Bahá’í Blog’s second Quiz, you can find out just how much you know about Abdu’l-Bahá’s travels to the West, and don’t forget to share the quiz with your friends, and let us know what you think in the comments section.

Good luck!

In Memory Of My Father: Sirus Naraqi

77 Comments

Sirus Naraqi: 30 Sept, 1942- Aug 18, 2004

Last night marked the 7th anniversary of the passing of my father, Sirus Naraqi.

Since his passing, I have been blessed to constantly meet so many people who knew him and loved him, and share with me how he touched their lives.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been able to look back on my parents’ lives and reflect on the experiences they had. It’s interesting how you start to see the human side of a parent as you get older, and realize that they too are ordinary people – much like you and your friends – with their own hopes and dreams, fears and regrets, trials and accomplishments.

My parents were born in Iran and they moved to the United States where they were married in 1969 in front of the Baha’i House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois. After my father finished specializing in medicine, my parents moved from the suburbs of Chicago to Papua New Guinea (PNG). I remember spending a lot of time with my dad going to the villages and doing both medical work and visiting the Baha’is there.

My parents ended up spending 20 years in PNG, and I remember an old colleague of my father from Chicago had written to him asking why he was still in PNG after so long, and what did PNG offer that the US didn’t offer. My dad’s reply was “It’s what PNG does not have that keeps us here.” Continue reading →

Heart to Heart: An Interview with Tahereh Etehad

, 2 Comments

Tahereh Etehad has a love for music and when the call came for Baha’is to help raise money for the Baha’i House of Worship in Chile, she stepped forward and decided to do her part by putting her vocal talents and musical abilities to good use by creating Heart to Heart, and contributing all the proceeds to the Chile Temple Fund.

I decided to catch up with Tahereh to find out more about her album and her thoughts on making music as a Baha’i.

Baha’i Blog: So tell us a little bit about yourself and your passion for music.

From a young age, I knew I was passionate about music. Celine Dion was my idol! When I was 10, I started to learn how to read music. I stopped going for lessons after a few years but continued to teach myself music. I have never been trained vocally but I feel that through my passion, I am able to express myself naturally through music.

When I was 16, I began writing music. When I finished high school, I completed a Bachelor of Popular Music. The Faith has transcended my passion for music to a whole new level. As Baha’u’llah says: “We, verily, have made music as a ladder for your souls, a means whereby they may be lifted up unto the realm on high…” Continue reading →

Baha’i Blog Quiz: The Bab

57 Comments

Hey, hey, hey Baha’i Blog readers! Here at Baha’i Blog, we love quizzes, so we’ve decided to start having a regular quiz post to help you all gauge just how much you may know about certain topics relating to the Faith.

In our very first Baha’i Blog quiz, we dedicate it to the life of the Bab.

Go ahead – take the quiz and let us know if you enjoyed it in the ‘comments’ section below. Good luck!

Music with Soul: An Interview with Navid B of Bluebottle Records

, 6 Comments

Navid Bahmani (AKA Navid B) became a Bahá’í about two years ago, and he recently founded his own record label called Bluebottle Records. I’ve known Navid B for some time now and I’ve been fortunate enough to be on the sidelines of seeing his musical career unfold. Bluebottle has just released their debut album called A New Dawn, so I sat down with Navid B and got him to tell me a little bit about himself and what he’s trying to achieve through his record label:

Baha’i Blog: So tell us a little about yourself and how you got into making music?

I’m from Sydney, Australia and I’m actually a hairdresser by trade, but music has always been my passion. Even though I haven’t been musically trained, a few years back I finally decided to buy a keyboard and to just try and express myself musically, so I started playing around with different tunes and beats and I just started posting it up online. Before I knew it I was contacted by an independent record label in the US asking me to release an album through them. That really gave me the confidence to keep working on my music and I guess I’m still learning a lot and I just try to keep working at it.

Baha’i Blog: So tell us why you started Bluebottle Records and what you hope to achieve with it.

Bluebottle Records aims to create hip-hop, R’n’B and soul music with a conscious twist. I wanted to start a label which would give myself and my friends an avenue to release our music. I wanted to have complete creative control as well as contractual control so our dealings would be fair.

As a label we want to create a movement of consciousness! People of all walks of life today are sucked into materialism, and unfortunately a lot of music often reflects this, so we are trying to put the ‘soul’ back into music! Continue reading →