Mahasti

Mahasti (Khadijeh Eftekhar Dadehbala) was born on 16 November 1946, in Tehran, Iran.She was the younger sister of Iranian singer Hayedeh. Mahasti started her career on the Persian traditional music radio program "Gol hâ ye Rangârang" (Persian: گلهای رنگارنگ "Colorful Flowers") in 1963, with the song "Ân ke Delam Râ Borde Khodâyâ" (Persian: آنكه دلم را برده خدایا) composed and arranged by maestro Parviz Yahaghi with lyrics by Bijan Taraghi. Mahasti created an image of a "gentle-woman" singer, a lady with great manners. Her enormous success in music opened the pathway for many other women, including her elder sister, Hayedeh, who started her work 5 years after Mahasti. The two sisters had tremendous contributions to improving the image of female singers in Iran and in transitioning the Iranian music from where it was to where it is now. In 1978, before the Iranian Revolution. she emigrated to the United Kingdom, and then to the United States in 1981, where she lived thereafter. In March 2007, Mahasti publicly announced that she had been battling colon cancer for four years. She died on 25 June 2007, aged 60, in Santa Rosa. Mahasti was interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California on 29 June 2007, the same cemetery where her sister Hayedeh was also buried.