Afro-Baloch Women’s Songs: Lullabies from Iranian Balochistan
Welcome to join us for an open lecture by guest researcher Maryam Nourzaei who is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the CNRS, Paris.
Open lecture
The talk presents preliminary results from the current Marie Skłodowska-Curie project entitled “A Treasure of Oral Narration: Lullabies of the African Diaspora in Iranian Balochistan.” The project documents and analyzes lullaby traditions among Afro-Baloch communities in southeastern Iran, focusing on their linguistic, musical and cultural dimensions. The results show that these songs function not only as soothing practices for children but also as important vehicles for memory, identity, and cultural transmission. The research highlights the role of lullabies in preserving traces of African heritage within the broader cultural landscape of Iranian Balochistan, reflecting the historical pain and experiences of slavery endured by these communities, and contributing to the study of oral traditions in diaspora communities.
About Maryam Nourzaei
Maryam Nourzaei is currently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the CNRS, Paris, working on the project “A Treasure of Oral Narration: Lullabies of the African Diaspora in Iranian Balochistan,” which documents and analyzes lullaby traditions among Afro-Baloch communities in Iran and Pakistan. She is an experienced researcher in Iranian Studies and her work involves multidisciplinary and international collaborations, bridging linguistics, cultural studies, oral literature and musicology.