Bandari is the joyful fast-tempo dance music of Iran's southern Persian Gulf coast, centred on Hormozgan Province (capital Bandar Abbas) and Bushehr Province. The ensemble uses neyanban (Persian Gulf bagpipe), tombak (single-headed frame drum), dohol (double-headed barrel drum), daf (frame drum), and — from the late twentieth century — keyboards and synth bass. Tempo runs 110–140 BPM in 6/8 or 4/4, and the melodic vocabulary mixes Arabic maqam and Indian-Ocean-trade-derived scales rather than the classical Persian modal system. Lyrics use the Hormozgan Persian dialect (sometimes with Arabic admixture) and treat love, the sea, work, and the memory of Iran's Afro-Iranian community's zār possession-ritual tradition.

Bandar Abbas has been an international port since at least the sixteenth century, receiving Portuguese, Dutch, English, and Omani trading fleets and — through East African slave trade from Zanzibar and Mozambique — building an Afro-Iranian community whose zār possession-ritual (exorcising unwanted spirits with song and drum) provided bandari's core rhythmic vocabulary. Through the early twentieth century, zār rhythms mixed with Gulf-trade Arab and Indian scales in wedding and sailing celebrations, coalescing into the genre now called bandari ('coastal' or 'port-side' in Persian). In the 1980s–90s, Mahmoud Jahan pushed bandari to national wedding-repertoire status; Barobax (formed 2003) and Ahmad Solo (from the 2010s) then electronic-fied the form for younger audiences.

Follow the drum-layer construction. Tombak lays a 4/4 bass, dohol punches beat 3, daf weaves an ornamental patter, and together they oscillate between 6/8 and 4/4 in a compound-meter fashion. Then the melody — the Hormozgan Persian dialect's flat intonation combines with Arabic-maqam half-step motion to produce the distinctive Gulf-coast sound. Mahmoud Jahan's 1990s recordings are the traditional canonical entry; Barobax's hits show the same structure filtered through 2000s electropop.

Start with Mahmoud Jahan's 1990s bandari recordings — the traditional-style template. Then Barobax's 'Susan Khanoom' era (late 2000s) for the tradition-meets-electropop fusion. Ahmad Solo's Instagram/SoundCloud singles from around 2018 onward show the tradition's contemporary vernacular form. For the underlying zār ritual music, Ocora Radio France's Persian Gulf field recordings from the 1970s remain the academic reference.

'Bandari' is Persian for 'coastal' or 'from the port' — derived from bandar (port). Bandar Abbas's population of roughly 500,000 includes a several-percent Afro-Iranian (Siyah, 'black') community whose zār rituals persist in household transmission. Hormozgan weddings feature 'Yazle,' a circle dance in which drummers and dancers alternate central roles — this is bandari's true native context. Tehran-centric Persian pop long derided bandari as 'low, provincial music'; the genre's survival was carried by weddings, not the record industry.