Sima Bina

Iranian vocalist Sima Bina developed her professional path across two main periods, first emerging as a youthful prodigy who presented the radio program Golhayeh Sahraie (Wild Flowers) and later concentrating as a teenager on the classical repertoire of her native country. Political upheaval in Iran during 1979, followed by legislation that banned women from singing in public, removed her from live performance and led her instead to assemble Khorassan and Persian folk songs while creating original material together with poet Mohammed Ebrahim Djafari and dotar player Hamid Khezri. Even after this turn in repertoire, Bina sustains an expressive warmth and vitality through her intensely emotional singing. Rootsworld described Bina as "a singer of strength and beauty, a trained classical singer who can keep it clean and reach for emotional highs in the simplest of phrases."

The daughter of Ahmad Bina, a composer and poet of Iranian classical music, she entered the field at age nine by joining a children’s broadcast on radio Iran. She remained active with the station until 1979 while training in classical music under Ma’aroufi and Zarinpanjeh and enrolling at Teheran University. After earning a fine-arts degree in 1969 she continued her studies with Davani.