CAUGHT IN THE CYCLONE:
THE SOUNDS OF ERIC ARCONTE

words SAMUEL TAFRESHI

The question of how music travels, transforming as it moves, is not easy to answer. There is no linear narrative to trace; sound is too ephemeral and transitory to leave an easily followed path. Sounds do not exist in a vacuum, they are ever-changing and influenced by local traditions, the soundscapes both natural and technological present in any place. Despite the difficulties at hand, when one investigates a musical genre or a specific time period, webs of connections will always emerge to provoke as many questions as answers.
       I found myself caught in one of these intricate webs during the summer of 2020 as I co-hosted a monthly radio show delving into the funk, jazz and pop music of Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Caucasus. The radio show — broadcast out of Bethlehem, Palestine by Radio Alhara — attempted to draw out the relationships between these musical scenes by looking at their shared political and rhythmic vocabularies. We chose to focus specifically on the 60s and 70s, a period of relative artistic freedom and funding for the arts that, for each of these countries, came to an end between 1978 to 1991. Military coups, invasions, wars, embargos and revolutions crippled their music industries. Their immensely talented musicians, beloved by millions, found themselves seeking out other professions, living in exile, dead, or in prison.
       As I prepared for our show on Iranian funk, I came across a song that stopped me in my tracks — such hard grooves, such tight percussion, and a loud, swinging jazz saxophone. I had been researching jazz and funk in Iran, but I had never found a song that reached such heights before. Most Iranians had little access to sheet music and taught themselves rock and jazz by repeatedly listening to imported pop songs until they understood how to play them; naturally limiting some musicians’ abilities to compose original music.
The song was Klackat (کلاکت) by Hassan Shamaizadeh, Bahram Salmasi, and Martik; a B-side to another song inspired by Iranian folklore. Despite knowing these artists already, and that Shamaizadeh was a musical giant, I was still confused because the song was so much more impressive than any funk song I’d heard by him before. I turned to the liner notes, discovering the music was composed and arranged by someone named ‘Areek’ (اریک), a very odd name until I put it together: ‘Eric’. Not an Iranian, but a Black Guadeloupean musician composing for some of Iran’s biggest stars.
I had always wondered how Iranian pop music developed this unique sound that fuses traditional styles with Latin, jazz, and funk? Now, I knew that at least a small part of the answer was this artist, Eric Arconte. From arranging pop music and composing film soundtracks to playing in garage rock bands, Eric was always somewhere to be found, lurking in the credits of an LP. Though finding him was not always easy. I quickly learned that there were many ‘Eric Arcontes’, inside and outside Iran, and that his audiences rarely overlapped or were even aware of each other. Iranians knew him well, but despite being a French national who had an extensive career in France and the Caribbean, he lacked a Wikipedia page in any language other than Persian. And despite many Iranians still remembering him, they had little to no knowledge of his work outside of Iran. My assumption had always been that imported western music and American cultural dominance was the sole force transforming Iranian music in the 60s. But here was an individual, a true outsider to Iranian society, playing a pivotal background role in the development of Iranian music, infusing sounds from the Caribbean, West Africa and France.
          Who was this unknown foreigner that had carved out such an impressive place for himself in Iran’s musical history, in spite of the country’s racism and anti-Blackness? And who was he outside of Iran?
       Pieced together from vinyl records, Iranian film credits, social media posts by former pop stars and a recently released documentary on Iranian garage rock, this is a portrait of Eric’s life. Far from a biography, this essay is made up of many disparate parts that are undoubtedly lacking in crucial details, but I hope it will paint some picture of the man and his musical legacy.

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One of five siblings born to Logres and Maurice Arconte, Eric was born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe in 1938. Logres would proudly recall how her son began playing tambu when he was only three years old — a drum common in West African and Caribbean music. Born at a pivotal moment in his people’s history, Eric would witness the blockades of the second World War and Guadeloupe’s incorporation into France in 1946, exchanging its colonial status for that of ‘overseas department.’
       The Arconte family moved to Paris in 1950, when Eric was twelve years old. After a stint at a technical school, he convinced his mother to enrol him at the 12th Paris conservatory. His education was unfortunately interrupted when, at eighteen years old, Eric was drafted into the French Army and forced to serve in the Algerian War of Independence.
       At a time when sugar-worker strikes broke out across Guadeloupe and the independence movement was gaining momentum back home, Eric’s fate was shared by many subjects of the French colonies who were drafted to suppress independence movements in other occupied territories. Many Guadeloupeans called to fight for France in Algeria were deeply impacted by the experience, especially as they faced the same violence at the hands of French officials. Friends and collaborators of Eric have noted that he always spoke bitterly about the war and his time in the French army, which only came to an end with the close of the war.
       Released from military conscription, Eric finished his degree in music before taking work in a post office and organising a variety of music groups and concerts in France. Over the next few years, he met his wife, known as Madam Gigi to their friends, and formed the Mediterranean Club Orchestra. The group began touring in Greece, Cyprus and Palestine. While finishing a series of concerts in Occupied Palestine, Eric was introduced to a group of Italian musicians on their way to Iran. The band lacked a jazz player and Eric happily joined them.
       Arriving in Iran in 1965, Eric immediately became embroiled in the pop and garage rock music scenes which were just beginning to take off and transform the music industry. Beatlemania had spread to Iran, with every hotel and music venue desperately searching for bands who could play the new styles. Despite the popularity of these genres, sheet music and Western-style instruments were hard to come by and it took time for bands to learn the songs, let alone compose their own in the same style. As a musician trained in Europe, Eric proved invaluable to them. He bounced around working for cover bands that needed a drummer or an arranger. Garage rock in particular was really flourishing in Iran and a handful of bands were gaining mass popularity playing songs by the Moody Blues, Deep Purple, James Taylor, and many others.
Having become fluent in Persian in only a few years, Eric really found his footing when he joined the band Scorpio (اسکورپیو) as a drummer and harmonica player. Scorpio became a first-class Iranian rock band booking the biggest cabaret clubs and hotel venues. Eric’s ability to play the drums and knowledge of Latin musical styles helped take them to new heights, playing more complex cover songs than most of their contemporaries. A boom in oil prices in the early 1970s led to a massive surge in the music business and the creation of the Manzariyeh Park Festival, a three day celebration of Iran’s new rock and pop music scenes. Scorpio performed alongside superstars such as Googoosh, Farhad Mehrad and the biggest rock cover bands in the country. The festival was, in many ways, the height of Scorpio’s popularity and that of the garage rock movement. Soon after, the interest in Western cover bands began to fade as audiences craved original pop and rock compositions and wanted more music performed in Persian.
A recently released documentary on the band, Scorpio (2019), interviewed its remaining members about the rock and roll era in Iran and the evolution of the band. They explained that as the appeal of rock cover bands declined, Bahram Saidi, one of the band’s leaders, left to play music in Italy. Eric left the band not long after to pursue a career in the thriving Persian pop music scene. While the film focuses more on the surviving members and only mentions Arconte a few times, band member Eini Keyvanshokooh explained that his replacement “could not do the same job as Eric, so we changed our style.”
Eric organised different music groups and played a variety of shows as others in the industry slowly took notice of his talent as a musician and composer. Varujan was an Iranian-Armenian arranger and composer, famous for his pop songs and film soundtracks, who met Eric and decided to take him under his wing. The collaboration between the two led Eric to writing the music for several Iranian films — such as Atashe-e Jonub (Southern Fire, 1976) and Boo-ye Gandom (The Scent of Wheat, 1977) — as well as arranging music for up-and-coming pop stars. His first major successes came from working with another alumni of the garage rock scene, Shahram Shabpareh, a former member of The Rebels, who also performed at the Manzariyeh Park Festival. Arconte’s dynamic songs, such as the Latin-jazz inspired hits Hot Kiss (داغ بوسه) and Inshallah (ان شاالله), helped Shabpareh transition from rock covers to original Persian pop music.
While playing a show at Hotel Onek, Eric was introduced to the legendary singer Googoosh and was asked to suggest a French song for her to perform. This was the beginning of what would be a career-defining relationship for him. To many Iranians, Googoosh is the premier Iranian singer and performer of this era; they consider her music to be a crucial part of their childhoods, always playing in the background of some party or on the radio and television. The combination of Googoosh’s voice and magnetic personality with Eric’s ability to integrate Caribbean jazz and West African funk with the rhythms of Iranian singing, produced many of her most beloved songs. Man Amadeh Am (من امده ام), Khalvat (خلوت), Adam and Eve (آدم و حوا) — the list goes on and on.
       By his late thirties, Eric was regularly writing music for films and collaborating with Googoosh, Hassan Shamaizadeh, Leila Forouhar, Farhad Mehrad, Ebi, Ramesh, Sattar, Habib, and countless other stars. He was the quiet yet well known background figure in the music scene that everyone loved to work with, but who audiences themselves rarely knew. Even today, musicians like Googoosh and Ebi still perform Eric’s songs to international audiences and credit him in their music videos.
       The end of this era came with the revolution of 1979. When he was forty years old, a popular revolution overthrew the monarchy and established a transitional government. The political tumult would motivate Eric to leave for France with his wife and Iranian-born son. The Arconte family, like many Iranians who left in this period, would never return. After Iran, he continued working with diasporic Iranian musicians over the next few decades.
       I must note that most of the information I’ve found on his career was a result of Iranian friends writing about him or what I could glean from the backs of vinyl records. Following his departure, Eric’s career changes and evolves with his surroundings, but there is far less information about his life to accompany the music.
       The next decade was a busy time for Eric, but very hard to follow. The traces of his music are scattered across many countries with records being released in West Africa, France, and the Caribbean. Not only was he releasing music all over the world, but the work he did was incredibly diverse in both genre and audience.
       In the first few years after leaving Iran, Eric returned to Guadeloupe to establish himself within the Caribbean music scene. Having left one revolution, he returned to find Guadeloupe in the throes of its own protracted uprising against French rule. Under these conditions, he released his first and only album, Transformation, with the singer Edouard Marie-Sainte in 1980. The product of a collaboration between Eric, Marie-Sainte, a relatively unknown singer, and Eric’s brother, Jacky Arconte — a musician in his own right — who played guitar and percussion on the album. While the music received little acclaim, it is undeniably a gem in his catalogue featuring a unique Jazz fusion sound that combines Iranian pop arrangements with Caribbean dance music.
In 1983, Eric collaborated with an Ivorian singer, Doh Albert, arranging his album Mijanou released in the Ivory Coast by Abidjan-based label, Sacodis Records. His next project was drum programming on an early Zouk deep-cut, the self-titled album Meliza (1984) who self-released the music in Guadeloupe. Despite the lack of popularity upon its release, the album has seen a revival in interest and become popular for its lo-fi tropical synth sound.
Later, Eric became the leader and musical director of the group Nar’Chiveol and released the album Esperance Music Wir with West Indies Recors E.M.
Similar to Meliza, the album did not receive much attention at the time but is now in high demand among Caribbean record collectors because of its unique Zouk-electric hybrid style and stand-out song, ‘Apocalypse Now Ho’.
Over the next decade, Eric’s music became more sporadic and even harder to follow. In his late fifties and early sixties, much of his work was either collaborations on children’s albums or inclusions on compilation albums featuring jazz or Latin music. The most interesting of these albums, and perhaps his last, is Le Petit Carnival Creole, an early 2000s record aimed at teaching children classic Creole-language songs. The only other album he worked on, somewhat bizarrely, is an audiobook of 'The Count of Monte Cristo' narrated by the famous French actor Francis Perrin, with each character being voiced by an actor. Eric arranged a few of the songs on the albums with his steel drum band, the Arconte Steel Band, but his most notable contribution was voicing the character Abbé Faria. In an odd way, I found this fitting. An older Eric, near the end of his life, voices the wise and wrongly imprisoned Faria who mentors the protagonist, helping him escape the prison in the process. Perhaps not a perfect role, but one as dignified as I feel Eric deserved.
       Without much other information available, I learned that Eric Arconte passed away in 2007. I know little about the circumstances surrounding his death, except that he died in France, he was only sixty-nine years old and was survived by his wife and at least one son, Antonio.
       As I reflect on Eric and his legacy, I think of his album, Transformation (1980). I love this album. The listener hears an unrestrained Arconte playing with the popular Zouk dance sounds of the time, but they also hear an unmistakably Iranian sound. Eric had just fled the Iranian revolution with his family and upon returning to Guadeloupe, he found agitation against the French and an independence movement gaining momentum. In this album, the listener hears the restrained chaos of the times, the political tumult, and the soundscapes of the many countries its composer traversed.
When I listen to the song Cyclone, I can hear the man who wrote Googoosh’s songs and the man who played drums in a garage rock band and the man who spent a decade writing Zouk dance music. I can hear the man born in the French colony of Guadeloupe and the man who spent fifteen years in Iran and the man forced to fight in Algeria. The language is not Persian, the songs are definitely more akin to the Caribbean than Iran, but there is something about the style — the intonation of the singing, the punctuation of the notes — that reveals not only the impact he had on Iranian music, but the impact it had on him.●

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