Biography

Yalda Yazdani is an ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, and curator born in Iran. She began her musical journey by playing the Tar. Currently, she is working as a research fellow and completing her PhD studies in the field of music at the University of Siegen in Germany. Since 2009, she has conducted various fieldwork research and produced short documentaries about female vocal songs and music in different regions of Iran. Since 2015, she has organized intercultural projects, documentaries, music workshops, and concerts across Iran and Europe, aiming to build collaborative bridges between European and Middle-Eastern musicians and artists.

In 2017 and 2018, she founded and curated the festivals "Female Voice of Iran," followed by "Female Voice of Afghanistan" in 2021, "Female Voice of Kurdistan" in 2023, and "Qashqai Female Voices" in 2024. These projects were collaborations with Contemporary Opera Berlin, Duisburg Philharmonie, and Rautenstrauch Joest Museum. She has worked with various documentary film productions in Iran, Afghanistan, and Kurdistan, focusing mainly on music and its potential to transcend cross-cultural borders. Her primary goal is to improve the situation of Middle-Eastern female musicians, both in their home countries and internationally.

In 2020, she was awarded a full scholarship from the House of Young Talents Academy to work on her PhD project, which focuses on women's music in post-revolutionary Iran. In 2021, she won the DAAD award (German Academic Exchange Service), the world's largest funding organization for the international exchange of students and researchers, for her commitment to the situation of female artists in Iran and Afghanistan.

Her latest collaborations include music and documentary projects such as "Saz, The Key of Trust" (Arte, 2018), "The Female Voice of Iran" (Contemporary Opera Berlin, 2020), "Life After Life, The Female Voice of Afghanistan" (CrossGeneration Media 2022), "Inner Unity Ensemble" (Duisburg Philharmonie 2023), and "Qashqai Female Voices" (Rautenstrauch Joest Museum 2024).