Blind man living in Iran makes music like everyone else

Amin wrote to me about his friend Aboozar. Aboozar lives in Mashhad, Iran's second city, close to the borders with Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. It's a pilgrimage centre, built around an enormous shrine. Aboozar is a traditional musician, who is almost completely blind, but he's found ways to use his computer to make dance music. You can hear his tracks here at his UK-hosted website. Amir says "he has problem with religious atmosphere in his hometown, Mashhad, which depicts music as an unholy thing." What's interesting about Aboozar isn't that his music is great (it's rather generic Euro-trance), or that he's doing it in a clever way (he uses the not-so-great Dance eJay 3 software). It's that Aboozar is pretty much exactly like you or me, which you don't alway hear about Iranians...