A music disc jockey who honed his skills in fundamentalist Iran is now a fixture of the Washington D.C. music scene, particularly among the 28 thousand or so Iranians living in the United States capital.
He calls himself simply DJ Dariush. His style is low-key. His music, whether for American or Iranian audiences, is Persian-inflected and intended for non-stop dancing.
Dariush Rateshtari, who is 32 years old now, started his DJ career more than fifteen years ago in Teheran.
As Dariush Rateshtari?s musical archive grew, so did the demand for his services at family-oriented events that required musical entertainment. In the Ayatollahs? Iran of the 1980s music was not easy to come by. Popular music was banned, there were no radio stations playing music, no music stores, and most of the country?s singers had fled to Europe or America. But for the ingenious and the determined -- people like DJ Dariush -- there were ways of keeping up with what was happening on the music scene.
Music was Dariush Rateshtari?s hobby. At Teheran University he studied geology, but an interest in art and drawing led him to take courses at a technical school in design and computer graphics. Dissatisfied with the limitations of life in Teheran, he longed to emigrate to America, which he believed would be more compatible with his way of thinking.
Finally, in 1999, an opportunity to leave Iran opened up, and he took it, going first to Austria and then to the United States. He says his transition to life in America was quick and smooth. Thanks to an aunt who had settled in the Washington area, twenty days after arriving he landed a job in a graphic design firm, where he still works. The Iranian community in the D.C. area welcomed him, and pretty soon he was DJ Dariush again, playing at various Iranian functions.
In fact, DJ Dariush recently mixed his pulsating dance-music mix at the Diva Nightclub, just blocks from the White House. The enthusiastic crowd was a mix of Persian and American young people. Part of DJ Dariush?s appeal is that his repertoire embraces a wide variety of musical styles, including techno, Arabic, Latino and Indian, as well as hip-hop and rap. And he has an up-to-the minute knowledge of what?s happening in the music world that helps him respond to the style and taste of any particular audience.
Dariush Rateshtari does not forsee leaving his work in graphic arts to devote himself full-time to music. He says he loves both fields, and is happy that he can continue to grow in his career as a web designer at the same time he?s spinning his unique mix of dance music as ?DJ Dariush?.