Biography

Eftekhar Dadehbala ( known as Mahasti (16 November 1946 – 25 June 2007) was an legendary Iranian singer and the younger sister of singer Hayedeh.

Background

Mahasti (November 16, 1946 – June 25, 2007) was an Iranian singer who was recognized as the “Banooye Golhaa va Delha” (Lady of hearts & flowers). She was the younger sister of another popular Iranian female singer, Hayedeh. Mahasti’s voice was discovered by maestro Parviz Yahaghi, a distinguished Iranian composer and violinist. She was amongst a rare group of singers who “started” their careers on the prestigious Persian traditional music radio program ‘Gol hâ ye Rangârang’( گلهای رنگارنگ), in 1963 with the song “Ân ke Delam Râ Borde Xodâyâ”(Persian -آنكه دلم را برده خدایا) composed and arranged by maestro Parviz Yahaghi with lyrics from Bijan Taraghi. She has worked with some of the most famous Iranian composers, including Parviz Yahaghi, Habibollah Badiei, Homayoon Khorram, Asadollah Malek, Anooshiravan Rohani, Jahanbakhsh Pazooki, Hasan Shamaeizadeh, Mohammad Heidari, Jamshid Sheibani, Sadegh Nojooki, and Manoochehr Cheshmazar as well as some younger composers such as Bijan Mortazavi, Faramarz Asef, Mehrdad Asemani, and Shadmehr Aghili.

Musical career

In the beginning, her family was reluctant to allow her to pursue a career in entertainment because it was not appreciated by Islam for women at the time in Iran. However, Mahasti overcame this stigma by providing Iran with a new image for women within the entertainment industry. She was an image of a “gentle-woman”, a lady with great manners. Her enormous success in music opened the way for many other women, including her older sister, Hayedeh, who started her work about 4 years after Mahasti. The two sisters made tremendous contributions to improving the image of female singers in Iran and in making the transition of Iranian music from where it was then, to where it is now.

Mahasti’s career was remarkable. In 2005, she was awarded the Persian Female Pop-Classic Vocalist of Excellence by the World Academy of Arts, Literature and Media (formerly Persian Academy Awards) for over 40 years of top performance in Persian pop music. She sang more than 400 songs, contributed to more than 200 music albums with oth