Behrouz Vejdani a member of Research Faculty of Iran's Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicraft Organization broke the news of his team’s efforts to register a group of Iranian instruments of Persian music in the World’s Instruments List of UNESCO.
Vejdani who along with people from Iran's Music House have been major contributors in processing the registration dossier of the Kamancheh in UNESCO’s list lamented what happened in the case of the Tar in which Azerbaijan took the initiative in registering an originally Persian instrument in UNESCO as an Azerbaijani instrument and urged Iranian culture officials to pace filing needed for registering Iranian instruments in UNESCO.
An Iranian bowed string instrument, Kamancheh the historical ancestor of the European violin family, also appears in paintings of 1669 on the Hasht Behesht Palace in Isfahan city of Iran.
Currently, the greatest maestro player of the instrument, is Kayhan Kalhor who was born in Kermanshah city of Iran in 1963. Internationally known, two of Kalhor’s works were nominated for Grammy Awards in 2004.
Other famous Iranian Kamancheh players include late Ali-Asghar Bahari, Ardeshir Kamkar and Saeed Farajpouri.