Hossein Vaseghi (1935 – 29 January 2008) was an Iranian composer and film score composer.

Hossein Vaseghi, with the full name Hossein Vaseghi Tabrizi, was born in Tabriz in 1935. After completing his sixth grade education, he moved to Tehran. He briefly attended Shapour Niakan's music and singing class.

Two years later, he participated in the radio singer selection test and became the first person to be a permanent singer on the Workers' program. In that program, a piece of music was prepared and performed by him daily. Due to the lack of funds for composing, Hossein Vaseghi began composing melodies himself and progressed day by day, to the point that he composed for many singers of the time.

Vaseghi emerged as a phenomenon in Iranian world of music and cinema, despite having no academic education in music and having only studied until the sixth grade of elementary school or a high school diploma at most.

"The most prolific composer in the history of Iranian cinema, with more than 180 films in his career as a song and soundtrack composer, while not ever writing a single note on the staff, or being able to play any instruments and never being recognized in official music circles."

He turned to watchmaking in his youth and came to Tehran with his family in 1951 when he was 19. He continued his profession of making watches in Tehran. Two years later, in 1953, he went to radio and worked as a choir singer. At Radio, with the help of his brother Esmail Vaseghi, who was educated in music and played the violin, Vaseghi turned to composing and composed songs for many singers.

Entering the Cinema

In 1960, Hossein Amirfazli, the producer and director of the Haloo, invited him to compose some of the compositions for the film. But this film, in which Vaseghi's name is not even in the credits, failed to bring him fame and give his career a boost.

Ten years later, in 1970, Colonel Mohammad Shabpareh invited him to work on the compositions of  Baba Karam. In this film, the foreign songs are all the work of the Black Cats group, managed by Shahbal Shabpareh, and Vaseghi composed the Persian songs. This film opened his path to film studios and from then on he entered the cinema as a composer of compositions.

In the same year, he also became known as a composer of film soundtracks by composing the soundtrack for Alley of Valiant at the Golden Age Studio, a film directed by Saeed Motalebi and starring Fardin and Iraj Ghaderi.

After the Revolution

With changing the political regime in Iran after the revolution, cinema, like other institutions, underwent fundamental changes. At that time, Vaseghi was 43 years old and at the peak of his career, but the changes that occurred led to pushing him away from cinema and music.

A few years later, in 1984, he traveled to Austria with his family and then immigrated to the United States and began composing music for famous singers, but he could not continue working there either and returned to Iran again. Finally, after a 16-year professional break, in 1994, he decided to re-enter film music production by composing music for the films Haami (Ghodratollah Solh Mirzaei), Marzieh (Esfandiar Shahidi), and Hala Che Shavad (Mohammad Jafari) and a television series, but again he found himself not capable of continuing his work and gave up composing film music forever.

Working method

Having no academic education and not knowing how to play the instrument, Vaseghi would perform the desired melody by mouth for his brother Esmail, who had studied music and was a violin player. Then Esmail would play it with for other musicians, and then Hossein would make some changes to it and get the desired song.

Death

Being no longer able to compose music, he traveled to the United States several times. He had diabetes and his illness was getting worse day by day. His relatives in America sends him to a nursing home. He loses his leg due to diabetes and dies on January 29, 2008, and his funeral and memorial service were held in silence.

Acting

1974 - Osakarim Nokaretim