Distress over remark during Vegas concert won’t dissipate

By Brian Eckhouse (contact)

Friday, Jan. 4, 2008 | midnight

They flocked here for a long Christmas weekend of diversion: parties, booze and slots, maybe some family time. The usual.

What 5,000 Persian-Americans encountered, however, didn't stay in Vegas. In a break between songs at Planet Hollywood on Dec. 23, Iranian artist Dariush Eghbali ignited a controversy that lingers nearly two weeks later: Did he make an anti-Semitic remark in his native tongue, Farsi?

Several Persian Jews from Southern California in attendance are positive he did, believing the artist equated their people with destroyers. But some Persians fluent in Farsi, including a prominent Jewish psychologist who is a friend of the singer's, contend the Iranian performer was quoting a Middle Eastern poet -- but in doing so, used a poor choice of words.

“It was lost in translation,” said the psychologist, Iraj Shamsian, who is also a Los Angeles radio personality. “He meant no disrespect to any religious minority.

“He doesn't think that way.”

That explanation, however, is unlikely to convince everyone in the substantial Persian community based in and around Los Angeles.

“Everywhere I'm going, people are talking about it,” said Monica Baradarian, 21, of Los Angeles, who was at the concert. “People will boycott him.”

According to several speakers of Farsi, in a video clip of the concert posted on Eghbali's Web site, www.dariush2000.com, the performer -- known around the world as Dariush -- launches into a soliloquy about national traits, partly in relationship to a project to convert classical Iranian poetry to song.

Eghbali refers to Middle Eastern writer Khalil Gibran, who says various peoples have “different talents”: The Iranians focus on the one bad tree in a beautiful park; the Germans are ambitious; Italians fashionistas; and the Jews “mochareb.” It is that word that enraged many Jewish concertgoers, who interpreted it to mean “destroyers.”

Apparently realizing such remarks might be considered insensitive, Eghbali then jokingly asks the attendees not to hold it against him, that the words were Gibran's ­-- “Tomorrow,” he said, “don't make a story about me.”

Several audience members quietly stewed, Bardarian said, while others screamed in Eghbali's direction, asking that he stop.

One attendee, 45-year-old Bob Dardashti of Southern California, said he confronted a concert organizer: “I said, ‘A guy who says something like that, is it right?'”

While Internet message boards have been mostly barren on the subject, chatter has been high among Persian Jews in Los Angeles, some concertgoers said. The 55-year-old Eghbali lives in Los Angeles when he is not in Paris. Several people have complained to representatives of TV network and concert promoter Tapesh, which has offices in Southern California and Dubai.

In a statement, Tapesh CEO and program host Alireza Amirghassemi said: “Tapesh Productions had no prior knowledge of and did not approve comments made by Dariush ... in Las Vegas and does not endorse those statements.”

Amirghassemi, in an interview, said he did not believe Eghbali had made an anti-Semitic statement, but admitted he wasn't present for the entire show.

“Mochareb” also can mean demolisher, aggressor or a person who ruins. The range is typical of Farsi, a nuanced language that “sometimes creates problems,” said Hossein Hedjazi, the program director of Los Angeles-based KIRN, a radio station for Persians.

Eghbali, who speaks little English, was unavailable for an interview. But Hedjazi and Shamsian both say his character and three decades in the public eye attest to the fact that he is not an anti-Semite.

“Absolutely not, he's not that kind of person,” said Hedjazi, who acknowledged Eghbali probably erred by making a speech during a concert.

What remains unclear is why Eghbali cited Gibran's views of Jews, Germans and Italians when addressing his concerns about how Persians at large would view his project.

“Maybe he wanted to show off his knowledge. That's common in the Persian culture,” speculated University of Southern California professor Najmedin Meshkati. “Sometimes you want to show off your knowledge to people, to score a point -- but that (can) come around to hurt you.”

Eghbali, who is said to be distraught over how his remarks were interpreted, is promoting no future concerts on his Web sites, so it will be some time before it is known whether his statements at the four walls event at Planet Hollywood will affect him at the box office. A boycott wouldn't be unprecedented for a Persian artist believed to have slighted the Iranian-Jewish community.

Given Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's attacks on Israel and his position as a Holocaust revisionist, it doesn't matter whether Eghbali “said it or repeated someone else's words,” said Phyllis Friedman, the Las Vegas regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, in an e-mail. “We find it to be very upsetting.”

Brian Eckhouse can be reached at 259-8815, at 474-7406 or at brian.eckhouse@lasvegassun.com.