TEHRAN -- Nasser Masoudi — the legendary Iranian vocalist whose honey-soaked voice carried the mist, rain, and restless spirit of northern Iran for generations — has died at 90 in Rasht after months of illness and age-related decline. For many Iranians, especially Gilakis, his voice was the sound of home.
Born in 1935 in Rasht’s Sayghalan neighborhood, Masoudi grew up in an Iran occupied by Allied forces, a childhood marked by loss and restlessness after the death of his father. Music became the one constant. By age seven, he was memorizing anything he heard on the handful of radios in town. By adolescence, he was singing in gardens, alleys and parks with friends, training his voice long before he stepped inside a real classroom.
In 1949, his family moved to Tehran, where a chance encounter landed him in the orbit of master musician Ali-Akbar Khan Shahnazi. Masoudi wasn’t formally trained, but Shahnazi recognized a raw precision in his voice and pushed him to study seriously. After several years in the capital, Masoudi returned to Gilan in the mid-1950s, performing in theater before joining the newly established Radio Gilan in 1957 as one of its earliest vocalists.
Everything changed in 1960 when he was introduced to two giants: Ahmad Ebadi and Molouk Zarabi. Their endorsement opened the doors to the famed “Golha” programs, where Masoudi recorded dozens of pieces with top-tier musicians — Jalil Shahnaz, Asghar Bahari, Farhang Sharif, Reza Varzandeh and many others. Over the next decades, he accumulated a catalog of more than 500 recordings: Persian orchestral works, traditional songs and, most famously, more than 250 Gilaki folk tracks.
Before the Islamic Revolution in 1979, songs like “Banafshe Gol,” “Allah Titi,” “Diwaneh-am,” and “Mosafer” circulated widely. In the late 1980s, his performance of the theme for the TV series Koochak-e Jangali reintroduced him to a new audience. Masoudi continued performing internationally and released notable albums into the 2010s, including Hala Chera, which earned major domestic awards.
His family will announce funeral details in the coming days.