Bio

Born in revolution that tore into war… “from Can’t Stop Now”

Turaj Zaim was born in Tehran, the capital city of Iran, just before the Iranian Revolution. His father's political activism kept getting the family into trouble, and Turaj spent a lot of time moving from place to place. When he got to see his grandmother, she would comfort him by reciting words from the great Persian poets. By the time the Iran-Iraq War hit, Turaj's family was living a life of death threats, tracer bullets coming through the walls, and tanks in the streets. After Saddam Hussein's bombs started dropping, Turaj escaped Iran with his mother and little brother. They made it to the U.S., where his new grandparents would read more poetry to him, this time from American poets Robert Frost and James Whitcomb Riley.

Descending from a long line of Iranian rebels and dissidents, Turaj is both formally and self-educated in politics. True to his calling, he left school early and took his songs across the West, performing regularly at venues like the Temple Bar Lounge in L.A. and Storyville in San Francisco. He has opened for Cypress Hill, performed with Slim Kid Tre of the Pharcyde, and done shows with San Francisco's Jazz Mafia. He is currently recording new tracks in Oakland, California. Turaj's hard-edged, riveting raps reveal him as a child of revolution, and his incredible sense of rhyme and meter reveal his upbringing on Persian and American poetry. He has been on two cities' national slam poetry teams, opened the Sundance Film Festival with a live hip hop band, and earned critical acclaim for Bad Dreams, an independent project he recorded and released with fellow storyteller-rapper, Reaper (see Contact tab).

Though still unsigned, Turaj's tracks have been on college radio stations and passed around on several Creative Commons videos. Check out Turaj's latest project, Magination, on Substack.