At Home With the Artist Rahill Jamalifard

“I love objects and I like to collect,” the artist Rahill Jamalifard tells me early on in our video call one cold January afternoon this year. For decades, first in Manhattan and more recently at the home she shares with her partner in New Lebanon, upstate New York, Rahill has been accumulating records, books, t-shirts, ornaments, paintings, football paraphernalia, US propagandist pin badges about the ’79 Iran hostage crisis (“it’s important to remind Americans how full of fucking hate they were and are”), and Persian rugs: there have been few better candidates for a column documenting the habits and possessions of interesting folks with interesting stuff.

Rahill is from Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Iranian parents who moved to the US around the time of the Iranian hostage crisis in the late 1970s. 12 years ago, she moved to New York where she started making music professionally, a word she doesn’t really like to use. Following her work with NYC-based psych-rock band Habibi, which she co-founded in the early 2010s, in 2023 Rahill released her solo debut, Flowers at Your Feet (Big Dada). Later this year, she will release her second album. You can also catch her playing an often stirring, moving, and hopeful mix of (modal) jazz on her monthly NTS show. This one from September last year includes opens with Pharoah Sanders’ Harvest Time and Sex by The Necks, two tracks which run for over half the set – a one-two which says a lot about her conviction and taste in great music.

Rahill is curious, contemplative, honest, and funny. An insatiable reader, visual and recording artist, she is someone who loves to share – music finds, documentaries she enjoyed, shoes, spectacular goals, or just a profound piece of wisdom. She seems to love life, while at the same time recognising how bad or ludicrous it can be. But she makes sense of it. “It’s embarrassing to be human,” she says.

Necklace with charms

Rahill Jamalifard: This was a present given as a new born from grandma, and I’ve worn it all my life – every day since day one. It’s an apple and an imam – it’s my guardian. You can see it on the cover of my solo debut album, Flowers at Your Feet. 

Football cleats

RJ: Football my only form of therapy, the only form of therapy – it feels more natural for me to be on the pitch than on a stage. It’s when my mind is at rest; when it’s blank. I’m a real creature of habit. I’ve had these Nike Tiempos at least eight years and I’ve had four of five pairs of the same boots in my life.

Lammassu statue

RJ: An ancient Assyerian protector of evil; a guardian, this statue is at the entrance of our home, similar to where they would place Lamassus in the ancient Mesopotamian empires, flanking important cites, like Persepolis, which is near the city of Shiraz, where my father is from. I have a deep connection through my ancestry to strong symbols like this.

Sketchbooks / notebooks

RJ: I also sketch/draw/am a visual artist — I made a book of crayon portraits of musicians I love. It’s called I’m This I’m That I’m in the World and it’s in the Moma permanent collection now, published here. I have started an athlete one, I should send you the portrait of Roy Keane lol) but I also notebooks for lyrics poems, and daily thoughts. I have five on the go at once. I love the promise of the blank canvas, of the unopened, new notebook. I also like the graveyard of words (those that I maybe don’t use but are there, always to see, from the past. Those and images – I have a deeper connection to them, and this is something the computer can’t mimic. That part of [my practice] is essential. The notebook is the sketchbook.

Jazz records

RJ: I couldn’t imagine life without them. Quite literally the soundtrack to my life. Namely that particular Lee Morgan record in the center of the photo pile. Particularly the song ‘You go to my head’, which has gotten more plays than any other song in recent years. 

The Old Musician by Édouard Manet

RJ: I found this framed tattered version and it hangs above my bed – I love it. So curious and strange, a bit of sadness in his eyes. It provokes a lot of feelings in me. Sadness, forlorn. I like to stare at him every day, theres something that feels familiar (perhaps because I’m a sad old musician too).

Painting of crying woman above my bookcase

RJ: Justus, my partner, bought this somewhere upstate. He said it reminded him of me which I think is funny because she is crying, but I really love the painting, particularly her expression which is not forthcoming, apart from that tear. I also love that red and for red to be a color in a room, it always draws me in.

Antique Persian rug

RJ: I love this rug, it is one of my most cherished things I own. It brings me so much joy. I think it’s because of my lineage, my grandfather being related to the Qashqa’i tribe and dealing in rugs, there is pride in the art form and it also is just familial to me. I grew up with Persian rugs filling every home we lived in, but I found this one on Facebook marketplace – it’s in really good condition. My dad’s idea of perfect is different to mine.

Wurlitzer electronic piano

RJ: I write most songs on keys, so this Wurtlizer, synths or old Casios. But this is the nicest one. I suss out a melody on it, it has a fuller sound. It always sounds better as a crude idea.

All photography by Justus Kempthorne.