Vahid Nickmanesh وحید نیک‌منش

Full biography

From session guitar to the Gulf–Bandari groove

Nickmanesh’s earliest documented performances are three guitar videos uploaded to YouTube in June 2008 under the title “Iranian Guitarist – Vahid Nickmanesh”, which together have been viewed more than 27,000 times.

From 2016 he worked as a session guitarist in the Hormozgan music scene, recording for singers including Nima Adeli, Saadat Najafi, Saeed Saeedi, Isaac Ahmadi, Jalal Afrogh, Hadi Sadri, Ahmad Tir and Yasin Shahryari, often alongside the arranger and producer Mohammad Talebi. Many of these releases carry the region’s own languages and grooves: Mah and Remix Bastaki by Jalal Afrogh are sung in the Bastaki dialect, and Ayahtenom by Yasin Shahryari takes its title from the Kahnouji dialect (“I am coming”).

His arrangement credits include Ayahtenom (2018, co-arranged with Mohammad Talebi) and Bigharar by Ali Abdollahi (2019). His guitar appears on releases distributed internationally, among them Ayahtenom and Sperso by Yasin Shahryari and Vabastegi by Ali Emami.

On stage he has performed in Bandar Abbas since at least 2016, including a guitar solo at an event commemorating the poet Shahriar in September 2016. On 1 May 2024 he led the band for Yasin Shahryari’s concert at Shobad Cinema in Kahnouj — two evening shows, listed as sold out on Tiwall.

Drawing on this practice, he documented the Gulf–Bandari 4/4 Method (2026), which separates a performer-readable 3+3+2 notation from an analytical 1/128 timing model for DAW and MIDI work. The method is published as an independent technical note on Zenodo with a DOI. His focus is the rhythmic language shared by communities around the Persian Gulf, and how to teach, notate and arrange it for today’s musicians.