Rashid Faiznejad, son of Haji Salim Khan, was born in 1951 in the village of Upper Araboglu in Saqiz. He came to Saqiz as a child and settled there. His father had a basic knowledge of the harp and the trumpet and music, and song concerts were held in the family.
Faiznejad started playing the flute and the diara as a child and began playing music and singing without a teacher. After a while he fell in love with the violin and for this purpose, he studied the first book of violin with Hamid Tawhidi in Saqiz for a year and later he continued to learn the second and third books of music. He participated in festivals in Saqiz as a violinist and singer.
At the age of 17, Rashid went to Urmia with his family for a summer trip. He happened to go to a music and theater center called Aria and wanted to stay there. He is tested by the music authorities and passes well. They decide to join the band and stay there.
During his years in the center, he was able to take advantage of this opportunity to educate himself very well and gain valuable experience in Persian and Azerbaijani music.
Along with these efforts, he worked as a teacher in artistic centers in Urmia. In 1971, when the Mahabad Radio and Television was established, he formed a music choir there with several other artists at the request of the head of the radio and he was in charge of the band for several years. Shortly before the fall of the Iranian monarchy, he recorded several songs for Naser Rezazi on Sanaa Radio and Television.
In 1975, when the Iranian monarchy turned its back on the late Mustafa Barzani, the Barzani revolution collapsed. Faiznejad and several others spoke out to the Shah of Iran on Radio Mahabad in protest against this action.
After this incident, he returned to Saqiz and resumed his activities in schools. He formed a small band with several other artists and continued teaching and recording songs until the 1979 revolution.
Faiznejad has been training and educating art lovers in schools for many years and has recorded many works for many of these artists, for example (Mohammad Mamle, Naser Rezazi, Mohammad Danesh, Qadir Sayyahi, Mohammad Nahid, Yousef Mustafa, Ahmad Hassanzadeh, Hama). Najjar, Brahim Fatahi, Seyed Ali Sardashti, Mustafa Dadar, Rahim Salavati, Nayeb Manbari, Sadiq Zohri, Brahim Khayat, Jamal, Mufti, Qadir Eliyasi, Seyed Braim Ismailzadeh, Hassan Darzi, Rahim Hajiji, Ali Zandi, Tahir Khalili, Ismail Saboor, Gharib Khadryar....).
With the uprising of the Iranian People's Revolution in 1979, Kurdistan breathed the air of semi-freedom and democracy for several years. It became clear that the government army had occupied Kurdistan again and the Iranian religious leader banned music and singing and decided that anyone who played music and sang would be punished. He would secretly record cassettes for singers underground and continue his path.
As mentioned above, these artistic efforts caused concern and hatred of the state authorities and under various pretexts, Rashid was arrested and sentenced to imprisonment and sent to Isfahan prison. His sentence was later overturned, and he was released. After his release from prison, he continued his artistic struggle more courageously than ever before, which created a secret anger in the hearts of the political and cultural authorities.
Therefore, they conspired to destroy the teacher's high personality among the masses and every day they used force and threats to ask him to participate in special state ceremonies and programs. Until he went abroad, he served the art of our people tirelessly and recorded many valuable works for singers.
Unfortunately, the pressure of the authorities, the difficult life of the artist and the economic deficit made him impatient and had to move abroad in 1991 and now lives in Finland. Although the departure of this teacher left a great sadness on the hearts of artists and art lovers, but abroad as much as possible continued his artistic struggle and participated in most national celebrations and events.
Apart from his talent as a singer, musician and teacher, Rashid Faiznejad has two rare and significant characteristics. The first is that he has a great hand in the field of composing The songs are folklore, and this requires a lot of expertise to make the songs resemble folklore in terms of form and rhythm.
This talented teacher has unprecedented authority in playing Maqams and sub-Maqams and there have been rare people in the history of Kurdish music who can extract the text of Maqams without any defects and with complete originality. Mr. Faiznejad has a high and intensive expertise in the field of playing Maqams and many people like Nasr Rezazi have learned Maqams and original music from him. He taught Kurdish music in Kurdistan schools and universities. His mind is full of Kurdish music and certainly no one else can get these pure and original music. If I want to describe Rashid Faiznejad in a few lines, I must say that he is a Kurdish musician, a talented singer, a talented composer, an unprecedented maqam player and an authoritative teacher of Kurdish original music.
Some of Rashid Faiznejad's works have been published in a book called “Ladlmaya” published in 2006 by Ali Abedi.
Prepared by : Ali Abedi[1]