Diaspora Arts Connection proudly welcomes back King Raam for an intimate performance at Central Stage on Saturday, August 16, 2025 at 7:00 PM. Join us for an evening of King Raam's most unforgettable music from his past albums and his new material from his upcoming album.

About King Raam:

Raam is an Iranian/Canadian musician, writer and podcast host. He started his musical career as the singer/songwriter/founder of Hypernova, a post-punk band in New York, which was born in the undergrounds of Tehran in the early 2000's. After Hypernova dissolved, he decided to pursue a solo career under the name of King Raam.

Raam was born in the coastal city of Bushehr, Iran, and moved to Eugene on the West Coast of the United States with his family at a young age. Raam would return to Iran in the 90s, where he lived as a teenager in Tehran. He later immigrated to Canada in 1998. A few years later he returned to Iran and found the band Hypernova, the first rock band to come out of Iran and get signed and tour with big acts around the world.

With a great deal of international press behind them, exposing a different side of the axis of evil, Hypernova paved the way for a new generation of aspiring underground Iranian artists. In 2008, Hypernova toured North America in support of Goth legends the Sisters of Mercy, their song Viva La Resistance is featured on the blockbuster video game Rock Band 3, and they performed at the Pangea Day Festival sponsored by the TED conference. The band has also been featured in the New York Times, MTV, Billboard, NPR, CNN, NME and Vanity Fair just to name a few.

Raam launched his solo career in Toronto in 2011 with Songs of the Wolves, a personal and sincere album of love and loss. With the help of Persian poet/author Tara Aghdashloo, who wrote lyrics for the album, Raam expanded his musical horizons singing in his native Persian language for the first time in his career. The success of the album was a pleasant surprise for everyone and was downloaded over a million times. It was a reaffirmation that there is a legitimate demand for an alternative sound in the Iranian music scene. He recorded his sophomore follow up The Vulture in 2013. His third EP A Day & A Year was recorded in Tehran and was followed up by a successful North American and European tour. In 2017 He released Until a Thousand and... which was his last album based out of Tehran.

In January 2018 Raam received a phone call that his father had been arrested in Iran on false charges of espionage and taken to the notorious Evin prison, two weeks later he got another phone call informing him of his father’s mysterious death in prison. Following the suspicious death of his father, the prominent Iranian/Canadian professor and environmentalist Kavous Seyed Emami, Raam and his family fearing for their safety decided to flee Iran and return to Canada. On March 8th while they were getting ready to board a plane from Tehran the authorities detained his mother and confiscated her passport. Raam and his brother were allowed to depart even though they didn’t want to leave their mother behind, but she pleaded with them to never come back and to just leave the country safe and sound. For almost 2 years his mother was held hostage while he campaigned for her release through the press and diplomatic channels. Eventually after 582 days his mother was able to leave the country and reunite with her sons.

After his father’s death, Raam channeled his creative energy into a one-man storytelling performance called “Departure” about his father’s legacy. The show landed him an artist residency with SHIM NYC (made possible by Artistic Freedom Initiative, Tamizdat and Westbeth Housing). He now hosts a Persian podcast called “Masty o Rasty” (The Drunken Truth) that he started in March 2020. His podcast has over 40 million streams/downloads. Raam recently went on tour with British/Iranian writer and director Javaad Alipoor performing "Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World" at theatres across the United States. He is currently working on his one man storytelling show and will start touring that performance around the world in 2026.