Masih Karimi

Masih Karimi is an Iranian musician, visual artist, and instructor of Kurdish tanbur and daf, based in Turin, Italy. Certified to teach both instruments since 2007, he carries one of the oldest sacred string traditions of Iranian Kurdistan into the present — as a performer, a teacher, and a painter whose two disciplines draw from the same source.

His path began with classical violin, followed by electric and classical guitar, until the discovery of maqam (modal) music in 2002 changed its course. He took up the daf and the tanbur — the sacred lute of the Yarsan tradition, whose repertoire has been passed from generation to generation by oral transmission for centuries — and studied under maestro Ali Akbar Moradi, widely acknowledged as the world authority on the Kurdish tanbur. Studying with Moradi is less a credential than an initiation: a direct line into a living oral lineage.

In 2021 Karimi moved to Italy to study painting at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, one of Italy’s oldest fine-arts institutions, and has since given concerts and workshops across the country. In 2023 he released SOMA with the SOMA Trio, alongside Peppe Frana (oud, Afghan rebab) and Ciro Montanari (tabla) — nine tracks of original compositions and traditional melodies drawn from Kurdish, Afghan, and Indian modal languages, released on the Felmay label.

Karimi teaches Kurdish tanbur and daf online, welcoming students from beginner to advanced levels. His lessons offer something rare: direct access to a repertoire that lives through oral transmission, taught by a musician trained at its source — patient, grounded, and faithful to the tradition he carries.