ZHENIIA

San Francisco-based bassist, trombonist, composer, and arranger Leela Paymai (ZHENIIA) grew up steeped in the sounds of Persian Pop music—Googoosh, Marjan, Dariush—before landing in the Bay Area and diving headfirst into the tangled, boundary-less world of modern jazz. What emerged is ZHENIIA: a genre-blurring, emotionally charged project that filters ancestral memory through a contemporary lens. ZHENIIA’s music is a collision of identities and histories, layered with microtonal scales, hip-hop rhythm, and psychedelic textures. Bass-driven and politically pointed, the songs reach across genre and geography, weaving oud melodies and Persian folk motifs through thick, improvisatory grooves. The band’s ever-shifting lineup reflects the fluidity of its sound—one show might feature electric violin, the next trombone—but there’s always a core of rhythm, synthesis, and soul. “I take a lot of inspiration from my grandparents and parents,” Paymai says, “who, despite surviving the Iranian revolution, always found time to make music. That spirit—of resilience, of beauty in chaos—fuels everything I do.” These are songs for survival, movement, and deep feeling—music to grieve to, dream through, and rise with. zheniia.com