Today we’d like to introduce you to Rameen Chaharbaghi.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Rameen. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m originally from Laurel, Maryland. My father is a civil engineer and a devout Muslim originally from Iran who grew up dirt-poor, the son of a merchant in a family of nine children. He came to Louisiana in the 1970s thanks to the generosity of one of his father’s clients, who didn’t want to see his intelligence wasted. My mother, originally raised Catholic in Baltimore, Maryland, happened to be in Louisiana with my grandmother in order to visit her sister, and as fate would have it, the one night they were there, they dined at the restaurant where my father was a waiter.
He was way nicer to my grandmother than any of the good ol’ Catholic boys my mother had dated until that point, so despite the rising Islamophobia in the US at the time, she ended up taking my father up as a pen pal and, later, a boyfriend. Unfortunately, my paternal grandfather ended up on his deathbed during the height of the Hostage Crisis, so my father had to return home to be with him. The volatile political situation in Iran meant that he couldn’t return to the US, so my mother pleaded with Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski for a fiance’s affidavit, and he was able to return thanks to her. This is why I voted for Senator Mikulski whenever she was on the ballot!
I’ve been musically inclined since the 4th grade when I began to play the flute and joined my school’s band. After I landed the title role in a middle school production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, I was hooked on singing, and in high school, I joined the choir and began to take voice lessons. My first voice teacher knew almost nothing about vocal technique and assigned me repertoire that would make no sense for me now, let alone at age 14. Still, he was an extremely passionate theater professional, and he instilled in me the ability to perform with passion, even if my singing was all kinds of messy!
By the end of high school, I wanted to pursue musical theater, but at the advice of my parents, decided to major in Music Education at the University of Maryland. It was thanks to UMD’s fantastic opera program that my passion for classical singing was fully ignited. After taking two years off, I applied to Masters of Music programs across the country. At the time, I was dating a chemist who would later move to Ann Arbor to pursue his Doctorate at the University of Michigan. Because UM has an excellent school of music and because he was there, I was DETERMINED to pursue my Master’s degree there.
Luckily, that same practical mindset that my parents instilled in me took over, so I applied to other programs as well, including UH. When I visited UM, though, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something felt… wrong. UM’s School of Music is phenomenal, to be sure, and I enjoyed meeting their students and faculty, but I just had this feeling in my gut that it wasn’t going to work out. It wasn’t at all how I felt when I visited UH, where I immediately clicked with the faculty, I made friends even in my short visits, and my trial voice lessons with teachers there were almost instantly productive. After my Michigan audition, that unshakeable feeling came back, like it just wasn’t going to work out, despite all of my efforts.
Sure enough, just two weeks before I got my rejection letter from Michigan, my boyfriend broke up with me. I was completely devastated, but less than a month later, I received my acceptance letter from UH! My commute home from my desk job at the time involved a 15-minute walk to the subway, a 30-minute subway ride, and a 30-minute walk home down a busy road, but I looked like a total idiot the whole way. I was walking on air, quite literally bouncing up and down, grinning for so long that my cheeks hurt when I got home.
The University of Houston was where I really began to understand my own artistry, and where I acquired the tools to begin the long process of fixing up my technical shortcomings. Shortly after I finished my coursework there, I was offered a touring contract with Portland Opera’s top-notch opera outreach program, Portland Opera to Go, which brings condensed versions of classic operas to school children and communities throughout Oregon and beyond. This tour was life-changing. I’ll never forget the day when we sang for a school in a town of less than 200 people. I have never seen a room full of children become silent as quickly as those kids did when the first vocal notes of the opera began.
This work fundamentally shifted my goal. I’d always wanted to pursue opera not just because I loved to sing, but because I felt that it was an art form that can unite people like no other. Opera knows no single language, place, or even time. My experiences on the tour made me realize that, rather than only performing, I wanted to dedicate my life to arts advocacy, making the arts more accessible for all and creating that world I dreamed of, where everyone could share the breathtaking experience of classical singing together. My first tour led to more outreach work with Portland Opera to Go and Houston Grand Opera to Go, and all three tours were equally life-changing and inspiring for different reasons.
Now, I sing with several companies in Houston, including the Houston Chamber Choir and Opera in the Heights. I cherish my place in the greater Houston community because we have one of the most exciting, diversified arts industries on the planet! I can sing all KINDS of music here, allowing me to explore music on my own terms. I have found a fantastic boyfriend and an adorable puppy in the city, and I’ve honestly never felt better.
Recently, my journey has led me to the Campbell Learning Center, a nonprofit music studio offering private lessons and other services in Spring Branch. As a music studio, we are unique because we emphasize core values like music literacy, professionalism, and community engagement. I hope to help continue the good work that came before me of building this business, and expanding its reach and its ability to bring music education to all of Houston!
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
One of the hardest things about growing up gay and bi-cultural in a liberal state in post-9/11 America was that I was educated enough to understand how xenophobia and homophobia operate, but not savvy or secure enough in myself to call out the forms of prejudice that continuously popped up around me, because nearly everyone I knew was progressive enough to choose micro-aggressions over blatantly offensive behavior. I was regularly exposed to discriminatory ideas, like that Persians were all boring and snooty, or that Americans were all uncultured and even dirty, but only through the power of suggestion. My American relatives would roll their eyes and moan, “The Persians…” any time an Iranian get-together was mentioned.
My Iranian friends and family would scoff and sneer if I ever stood up for American culture, chiding me with statements like, “America has no culture.” People at school would ask me ridiculous questions, like whether or not I “agreed” with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers, or how I knew I was gay if I’d never been with a woman. The problem with these kinds of subtle, under-the-surface forms of discrimination is that they are just quiet enough that any attempt to confront them directly is almost always used against you. People retort with things like, “Stop reading into it so much!” or, “Don’t take it so seriously!” The truth is, though, that they are intentionally difficult to confront, a kind of mask designed to protect the perpetrator and absolve them of any responsibility through concealment.
As anyone belonging to any minority can tell you, it’s much harder to brush these things off when you’re regularly exposed to them. This created a situation where I never felt like I belonged anywhere. I felt too foreign for both my American and Iranian families. I was the first full graduating class of my then-new high school, and I felt too gay for nearly everyone because I was nearly the only out student on campus. It felt like I would be alone my entire life. Luckily, I came to find my own family, not unlike others in the LGBTQ+ community.
As an only child, I often felt that exceedingly high expectations were placed on me. It was difficult to get my parents to accept my desire to pursue a life in the arts. You can insert a joke about Persians wanting their kids to be doctors here if you wish because that was absolutely true of my father! My parents’ concerns about my artistic ambitions were certainly well-founded – it isn’t exactly a stable lifestyle – but it was sometimes difficult to see just how little they understood opera. To this day, my father won’t come and see shows, because he hates opera that much.
As a singer, catching up with my technical faults has been a very long and arduous process. I’m a chronic overachiever, and I have a tendency to be very tough on myself, As any professional opera singer can attest, your body is quite literally your instrument, and it responds to anxiety and emotion faster than you can keep up with it. Even though I practiced constantly during my degree work, I still struggled with my bad habits, and this made it difficult to watch my colleagues succeed before I began to find success, especially when some of them were younger than me. This is why outreach work has been so freeing for me. When you’re touring, you have no spare time or energy to beat yourself up.
Between driving for hours on end, lifting heavy set pieces, performing in a wide variety of less-than-ideal environments, and fending off all manner of bacteria that your little audience members may be carrying, you have no choice but to steel yourself and do your best. It was during these tours that I learned how to trust my technique, and to play to my strengths. Children are my favorite audience to perform for because their inner critics are usually still nascent. Children will react more freely to that funny gesture you come up with or that loud note you sing than any adult ever will. They are unrestrained in their enthusiasm, and I find it incredibly refreshing.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
The Campbell Learning Center is a nonprofit educational center specializing predominantly in private music lessons in piano, violin, harp, voice, guitar, and select woodwind instruments, although we also offer programs for language learning and special needs through partnerships with local schools and organizations. We enroll on a semester basis as opposed to a monthly basis, because we emphasize a disciplined approach to long-term musical achievement, as opposed to simply studying to learn “that one song.” Our primary goals for students include music literacy, technical finesse, professional discipline, and artistic playing.
We encourage our students not only to perform in our beautiful, 250-seat in-house recital hall, but also to perform for local community organizations, such as retirement homes, community centers, and libraries. Our goal is not only to enrich our students’ lives, but to enrich the greater Houston community through this type of engagement, and to foster in our youngest students an enthusiasm for using their gifts to serve the community, so that future generations will continue this process of giving back.
Recently, our Program Director was granted the prestigious position of the Houston Representative for the Associated Board of the Royal School of Music, an internationally-recognized music curriculum that offers exam and competition opportunities for a variety of instrumentalists and vocalists at all levels. In addition to her expertise, nearly all of our teachers possess Masters degrees or higher. Furthermore, we believe that our students can be enriched by experiencing music played by professionals, and as such, we offer a free Open Door Concert in our in-house recital hall once per month during the school year.
A wide variety of ensembles in the city have brought their talents to Campbell’s stage, from Da Camera Houston and the Bach Society of Houston to Opera in the Heights, and more. Aside from these professional relationships, our piano division features partnerships with several critical entities, including the Steinway Piano Gallery and several leading piano book publishers, allowing us to offer our students unique opportunities and even deals.
Above all, the Campbell Learning Center is bringing accessible and affordable music education to the Spring Branch and Greater Houston areas, with an emphasis on developing the holistic and dedicated young musician.
What were you like growing up?
I was an imaginative, strange child. I had enormous, Harry Potter-sized glasses, overly large clothes (and no older sibling to blame it on), fuzzy hair, and absolutely no sense of self-awareness. I did my best to be social, but I would inevitably say or do incredibly awkward things that baffled the people around me. Secretly, I was super introverted.
Video games were (and still are) one of my favorite activities. I was obsessed, though, with creating. I would pace around my house for hours at a time, telling myself stories I would make up. I had whole swaths of stories in my head, entire casts of fantastical characters. I would write poetry, I would draw, I would do ANYTHING to create.
I was HIGHLY sensitive. I remember crying hysterically in elementary school when a girl picked a flower in front of me because she was a MURDERER! I was also terrified of getting in trouble. Every day for about a month of 1st grade, when my father picked me up from school, I would voluntarily report to him my total tally of times when I had “gotten in trouble” in school. I’m sure he was at first mortified that I was regularly being sent to the principal’s office or something, but actually, I had spent each day counting every single time I was even remotely chastised – a quick shushing, a mean look from a teacher, anything. As you might have already guessed, the great irony here was that I was a model student – I got stellar grades, I almost never misbehaved, and I got along with all of my teachers.
As a teenager, my wild imagination grew into a talent for story-telling and impersonating at all manner of events. Maybe it was because I was exposed to two radically different cultures with all of those aforementioned, subtle biases, or maybe it was just because it’s in my DNA. Either way, I became highly observant. I wasn’t always able to discern why people were doing certain things, and I was even more rarely able to respond appropriately, but I could spot behaviors that other people missed. I noticed the kids who weren’t seen or heard by other people.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1440 Campbell Road Houston, TX 77055
- Website: http://www.clc-houston.org/
- Phone: (713) 464-4388
- Email: contact@clc-houston.org
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CampbellLearningCenter/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/CLC_Houston
Image Credit:
Shannon Langman Photography
Last photo: Jeff Glass Photography, LLC
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