Arash Labaf was born in Tehran, Iran. At age ten, he and his family moved to Sweden, where he still resides. In an interview with BBC Persian Television, he has mentioned that his mother and father are from the Iranian cities of Shiraz and Isfahan, respectively.^[1] Also in one of his interviews, he stated his great grandfather is Iranian Azeri.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} In an interview with Arash confessed: “My great-grandfather was an Azeri so I always feel my Azerbaijani roots.”.^[9] Consequently his family moved to Malmö, Sweden. He resides in Malmö when he is not on tour and considers it his hometown. He has two younger brothers, Ashkan Labaf, a doctor, and Arsalan Labaf, a lawyer.

Career

Arash has said that the reason he chooses to sing in his native language is because of his “deep attachment to Iran and Persian culture.”^[10]

His debut album, Arash, was released by the Warner Music Sweden in June 2005, after he had finished college. His singles, “Boro Boro” (“Go Away”) and “Temptation” (featuring Rebecca Zadig) made it to the hit lists around Europe, and their respective videos garnered significant airplay on more than 20 MTV outlets across the world.

In addition to successes in his home countries’ music charts, namely Sweden and Iran, the platinum-selling singer and producer Arash has had hits notably in Eastern European and South-East European charts like Russia, Ukraine, Greece, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania, Turkey and in Asian music charts like in Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and throughout the Arab Middle Eastern countries. Arash is highly valued in Poland. His song “Boro Boro” has been played in an Indian Bollywood movie as well.

He has got gold in 5 countries: Germany, Russia, Slovenia and Greece for his album, Arash, and in Sweden for “Boro Boro”.^[11] This song was also featured in the Hindi Bollywood film “Bluffmaster” and he was The Artist of The Month on MTV India.He made a guest appearance in the movie as well as a DJ singing “Boro Boro”. Arash has accumulated airplay on MTV outlets in more than 35 countries.^[12]

Arash is managed by former Warner Music A&R agent Henrik Uhlmann, and is represented in the United States by Mayar Zokaei.

Collaborations

Rebecca Zadig and Arash in a concert in Las Vegas, December 2008 Aysel and Arash in the Green Room during the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow.

Arash’s claim to fame, his hit “Temptation” was a collaboration with Swedish singer Rebecca Zadig.

Another collaboration of Arash was with Pakistani-Danish singer Anila Mirza in the hit “Chori Chori” and the three-way collaboration between Arash / Aneela / Rebecca Zadig in “Bombay Dreams”

Arash has released a Russian song; “Восточные Сказки” (Vostochnyie Skazki) (featuring Блестящие Blestyashchie), a Russian version of “Temptation”, in which he sings in Russian and the Russian version became a big hit in Russian charts. In Russia, Arash recorded several other singles with Russia’s popular performers: Anna Semenovich (На моря), Крёстная Семья (Baskon)

DJ Aligator (also of Persian origin) appeared in Arash’s music video for “Music is My Language” as the producer and rapper.

The song “Suddenly” features Rebecca Zadig, whereas his song “Man o to” features Slovak singer Lucia.

In his 2006 album (Crossfade), Arash, DJ Aligator and Shahkar Bineshpajoo made a song for the Iranian Football team for their appearance in the 2006 World Cup.

Arash released in March 2008 his third album, Donya, featuring a reggaeton/dancehall influenced single “Donya” in collaboration with Shaggy and the single “Kandi” featuring the New York star Lumidee. Other singles include “Suddenly” (featuring Rebecca), “Pure Love” (featuring Helena), and “Dasa Bala” (featuring Timbuktu). Music videos were made for “Donya”, “Suddenly”, “Pure Love”, “Kandi” (for its 2009 re-release)and “Dasa bala”

Helena did not take part in the music video of “Pure Love”, although her voice was used in it. The video was starred by Arash, together with the Venezuelan beauty queen, Marianne Puglia.^[13]

Arash has produced along with Thomas G:son, Robert Uhlmann, and Johan Bejerholm the Swedish entry to the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2010 “Allt jag vill ha” that will be performed by Josefine Ridell.^[14][15][16]

Eurovision Song Contest 2009

In early 2009, it was revealed that the Azerbaijani entry for the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 would be the song “Always” which was written and composed by Arash. The song was performed by Aysel Teymurzadeh and Arash in a duet in Semifinal 2 of the Eurovision competition.^[17][18] The song qualified for the Eurovision Song Contest final which took place on 16 May 2009, and was placed third, which is Azerbaijan’s best result so far.