Click to goto Senadee’s Facebook page
The dust settled in post revolution Iran, and from the ashes of a previously monarchist state, families everywhere awakened to find themselves in new worlds of change. What do people expect from a boy lost in the aftermath of a Diaspora which engulfed a nation and its peoples over thirty years ago? In Senadee’s case his parents expected an academic, what they got was a musical scholar.
But this is no typical tale of two cities, and this is not the biography of a typical boy. Growing pains were ever present for Senadee, his home life marred by a constant rebellion against the dictated cultural norms , and the streets of South-east London presenting a grey barren landscape where opportunities were few and far between and rarely without moral cost but frequently inhospitable for an impressionable mind.
The towering estates were quickly but unwillingly replaced with a middle-class community life, where Senadee found himself, again, fraught with a new, different set of image based social and personal obstacles.
A life, which commands change, forms a man roughened by permanent transition. Accordingly, Senadee often cut a solitary figure amongst peers he did not relate to, looking towards and not above into the eyes of those who were commonly aspired to. Acceptance became meaningless, but its absence was nonetheless poignant for the young man who felt he never belonged.
As an adolescent, Senadee became witness to an increasingly volatile environment at home, with aggressive outbursts and physical hostility becoming a frequent occurrence in his life. These experiences would later haunt him, becoming the source of much impotent frustration as a young man. His sense of morality was considerably darkened, as right and wrong became deceptively interchangeable in his mind.
Had it not been for the death of a friend, these untapped emotions may well have painted a far different, more sinister picture. But dealing with the loss became the trigger that he needed, to provide a creative outlet for his once internalised anguish. His relationship with music was an intense one, which led to the self taught pianist and guitarist adding musical production to his own credits within a relatively short space of time.
Acceptance was earned through this unwavering dedication to music.
Armed with a band and the prospect of commercial success Sena was faced with another major obstacle. Presented with choices, which would have prospectively altered the course of his life, but infringed on his principles, he chose not to choose.
Walking away from everything he had worked so hard for seemed the only option when burdened with such a heavy conscience. The boy once troubled by the ghosts of his unconventional childhood now stood as a man, who created his own forum for acceptance.
His song writing, unlike his life was grounded in a sense of emotive permanence.
Through his songs Senadee captures a definitive sense of the “real†through the eyes of a man who had looked up into a different sky every day and wished for nothing but stability.
By Pardis Shafafi.