Esmat Bagherpour Panbehzan (عصمت باقرپور پنبه زن), known as Delkash (دلکش), (February 26, 1925 – September 2, 2004) was an Iranian female singer, singing in Persian and the local Iranian language of Mazandarani. She was born in Babol, and was the daughter of a cotton trader who had twelve other children. She came to Tehran to study, but she was discovered soon and was introduced to the music masters of the time, Ruhollah Khaleghi and Abdolali Vaziri. She was named Delkash by Khaleghi. Delkash started public singing in 1943 and was employed in Radio Iran in 1945, only five years after the establishment of the program. There, she worked with the composer Mehdi Khaledi for seven years, until 1952, which made them both very famous. The bests of her songs were written by Rahim Moeini Kermanshahi , Iranian lyricist, and Ali Tajvidi, Iranian composer, from 1954 until 1969. She also worked as a song writer under the pen name of Niloofar (نیلوفر) and played in a few Iranian movies, including Sharmsaar, Maadar, Farda Roushan Ast, Afsoungar, and Dasiseh. Delkash died in 2004, at the age of 80, in Tehran Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.