Iranian-born Laleh named Sweden's Artist of the Year (video)
Laleh is possibly Sweden’s best-kept musical secret. Laleh Pourkarim, of Iranian descent, has earned several Swedish Grammys: Artist of the Year, Newcomer and the Producer of the Year. She was also among performers of 2012 Nobel Peace Prize Concert. As a multi-instrumentalist, singer and producer, "Laleh" entered the music industry in 2005 with her self-titled debut album that peaked at number one in Sweden and went on to become the highest selling album of the year. She has recorded four albums, and her latest “Sjunger” went gold in Norway and Platinum in Sweden. The lead single from Sjung, "Some Die Young" (seen below) was a commercial hit across Scandinavia, peaking at number one in Norway for eight weeks in 2012 and becoming the 20th biggest selling single of all time in the country.
Laleh was born in the Northern Iranian harbour town of Bandar-e Anzali, but fled the country a year later with her parents to live in Azerbaijan, and later moving on to Minsk and a refugee camp in Tidaholm. She moved to Sweden when she was twelve (she has dual citizenship), and in her teenage years moved to Gothenburg to attend school in the multicultural district of Angered.
At Hvitfeldtska High School she was enrolled in the music program, growing up with classical music, ballet and circus music. She later got interested in punk, reggae and jazz music. She also learned to play the guitar, and formed a jazz ensemble, Bejola, with her music teacher when she was a teenager, and went on to teach herself to play percussion and the saxophone.
She is the daughter of Houshang Pourkarim, an artist, journalist and prominent Iranian ethnologist/sociologist from Bandar-e Anzali, and a critic of the Islamic government in Tehran. During her appearance on Så mycket bättre, Laleh discussed her tough childhood, moving from country to country, and how she witnessed her father drowning in 1994, when he tried to rescue a woman in distress who had fallen from her canoe into the water while at a summer camp organised by an Iranian association. As Houshang paddled out to help her, the canoe overturned. The woman survived but Laleh's father drowned. Laleh's mother, Atef, was a refugee from Georgia via Azerbaijan before she went to Iran to study comparative literature at the University of Tehran. Once the family arrived in Sweden, Laleh claims to have learned Swedish in only eleven days.
Beginning her career in acting, she had a major role in the Swedish movie Jalla! Jalla!, directed by Josef Fares, which was a big success at the Swedish box office in 2000. Laleh moved to Stockholm in 2010 following a short stint in Skellefteå. She has become known for her reluctance to give interviews and has been noted for her unconventional way of handling the press by keeping her private life out of the media.
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