Mahmoud Zoufonoun (Jan 1st, 1920 - Oct 17th, 2013) held an unparalled position in 20th century Persian traditional music, for he not only was a major figure on violin and tar during the golden era of Iran's National Radio and Television (1940's - 60's) - performing, conducting, arranging, and archiving melodies from every region of the country - but was also a primary force in the development of musical education, collaborating with pioneers Abol Hassan Saba, Ruhollah Khaleghi and others, in order to expand and transmit materials related to the radifs, pedagogical repertoires of traditional music learned in order to create within the Persian modal system, called dastgah (for further information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Zoufonoun). (more)