Category: Asghar Khaledi

Asghar Khaledi (born in Tehran, September 16, 1921 – ) is a Santur player. He was born in the Sangalaj neighborhood of Tehran. As a child, he became interested in the Santur by listening to the performance of Habib Samai and began to learn this instrument autodidactically and by listening to Samai’s performances. After a while, through his older brother -Mehdi Khaledi- he went to Habib Samai for training. Then, along with thirty-eight other people, he enrolled in the National Music School, among whom only he, Mansour Yahaghi (Perviz Yahaghi’s older brother), Manouchehr Jahanbeglou, Hossein Saba, and Seyed Mustafa Qarab were accepted. During the conservatory period, Habib Samai taught them twice a week. In 1946, when Samai passed away, Khaledi went to Abolhasan Saba and was taught by him, until he started working in Mehdi Khaledi’s orchestra (on the radio).
Asghar Khaledi, in the Golha program with Mohammad Shirkodaei, was in charge of performing the overture of the program. On the radio, he played the Santur along with the performances of great singers such as Adib Khansari, Gholamhossein Banan and Hossein Qawami. Khaledi, for fifteen days, had a performance (Santur and Tombak duet) with Hossein Tehrani at the Bu-Ali Sina Millennium Celebration, which was held by the Iraqi Ministry of Fine Arts.
Among Asghar Khaledi’s important performances, we can mention the album “Setar of Ahmad Ebadi and Violin of Mehdi Khaledi”, in which he accompanied them with Santur and Mehrdad Khaledi with percussion, and was published in 1977 by the Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults.