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VOICES OF A REBELLIOUS GENERATION: CULTURAL AND POLITICAL RESISTANCE IN IRAN’S UNDERGROUND ROCK MUSIC

SHABNAM GOLI

A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF MUSIC

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2014

I dedicate this thesis to my soul mate, Alireza Pourreza, for his unconditional love and support. I owe this achievement to you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the help and support of many people. I thank my committee chair, Dr. Larry Crook, for his continuous guidance and encouragement during these three years. I thank you for believing in me and giving me the possibility for growing intellectually and musically. I am very thankful to my committee member, Dr. Welson Tremura, who devoted numerous hours of endless assistance to my research. I thank you for mentoring me and dedicating your kind help and patience to my work. I also thank my professors at the University of

Florida, Dr. Silvio dos Santos, Dr. Jennifer Smith, and Dr. Jennifer Thomas, who taught me how to think and how to prosper in my academic life.

Furthermore, I express my sincere gratitude to all the informants who agreed to participate in several hours of online and telephone interviews despite all their difficulties, and generously shared their priceless knowledge and experience with me. I thank Alireza Pourreza, Aldoush Alpanian, Davood Ajir, Ali Baghfar, Maryam Asadi,

Mana Neyestani, Arash Sobhani, ElectroqutE band members, Shahyar Kabiri, Hooman

Ajdari, Arya Karnafi, Ebrahim Nabavi, and Babak Chaman Ara for all their assistance and support. This thesis is dedicated to all of you. I hope that I have made some progress toward explaining the value of your contributions to Iranian music and society.

I am also very grateful to Paran Davari for all her moral support. Finally, I thank my parents who encouraged me to fight for my dreams, respected my decisions and supported me in my musical and academic career during all these years away from home. I would never have succeeded without their love and devotions.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

LIST OF TABLES ...... 7

LIST OF FIGURES ...... 8

LIST OF EXAMPLES ...... 9

ABSTRACT ...... 10

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 12

Background of the Research ...... 12 Review of Literature ...... 16 Purpose and Significance of the Research ...... 26 Methodology ...... 28 Plan of the Thesis ...... 34 Transliteration and Spelling of Farsi Words ...... 36

2 HISTORY OF ROCK...... 38

What is Persian Popular Music? ...... 38 Historical Context of Persian Popular and Rock Music ...... 43 Pre-Revolutionary Influential Rock Bands and Musicians ...... 51 Black Cats ...... 51 The Rebels ...... 53 Scorpio ...... 55 Farhad Mehrad ...... 55 Kourosh Yaghmaie ...... 59 Controversies of “The Founder of Persian Rock” and “The God Father of Persian Rock” ...... 63 Conclusion ...... 66

3 MUSIC AFTER THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION ...... 75

Islamic Revolution and Music ...... 75 Socio-Cultural Impacts of the Islamic Revolution ...... 77 Mohammad Khatami: Socio-Cultural Reformation and Relaxation of Regulations ...... 84 The Emergence of Underground Music ...... 90

4 THE EXPRESSION OF RESISTANCE IN URM: SIX CASE STUDIES ...... 108

The Examination of Socio-cultural and Socio-political Issues ...... 110 Vehicles for the Expression of Resistance ...... 114 Addressing the Rebellious Nature of URM ...... 116 Let the Music Talk ...... 118 The Ways ...... 118 “Shahre man koo?” (where is my city?) ...... 120 “Tehran” ...... 125 ElectroqutE ...... 129 “Khākestari” (gray) ...... 132 “Mohreh” (chess piece/ game counter) ...... 135 “Ghesse Zir Zamin” (Story of the Underground) by The Ways, Arad Aria, Erwin Khachikian, Arian Nayeinei, and Yas ...... 139 Hooman Ajdari ...... 145 Conclusion ...... 148

5 CONCLUSION ...... 163

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 172

Discography ...... 180

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 182

LIST OF TABLES

Table page 2-1 “Pop Father of Persia,” Lyrics written by Shahbal Shabpare ...... 70

2-2 “Gonjeshkak Ashimashi,” Lyrics written by Ahmad Shamloo and Hasan Hatami, Composed by Esfandyar Monfared Zadeh...... 70

2-3 “Gole Yakh” Lyrics by Mehdi Akhavan Langarudi, Composed by Kourosh Yaghmaie...... 71

4-1 “Shahre Man Koo?” Lyrics by Kaveh Afagh and Iman Mohammadi, Composed by Kaveh Afagh, Arranged by The Ways...... 153

4-2 “Tehran” by the Ways Band, Lyrics and Music by Kaveh Afagh, Arrangement by the Ways...... 155

4-3 “Khākestari” Lyrics by Mehrdad, Music by ElectroqutE ...... 157

4-4 “Mohreh,” Lyrics by Mehrdad, Music by ElectroqutE...... 158

4-5 “Ghesse Zir Zamin” Lyrics by Kaveh Afagh and Yas, Music by The Ways ...... 160

4-6 “Polis Rāh” Lyrics and Music by Hooman Ajdari...... 162

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure page

1-1 Iran’s map depicting major cities including Tehran, Mashhad (second largest city), Tabriz (third largest city), and etc...... 37

2-1 Black Cats performing in Ghasre Shirin Club in 1966. (Farhad Mehrad’s Official Website 2012)...... 72

2-2 Scorpio performing in rock festival in Manzarieh in 1974 (Nabavi 2013). Photo from Ebrahim Nabavi’s old photo collection used with his approval...... 72

2-3 The Sinners’ Performance in Amjadieh (Tehran) in 1966. Photo from Ebrahim Nabavi’s old photo collection used with his approval (Nabavi 2013: 155)...... 73

2-4 Fireball band in Tehran in 1970...... 73

2-5 A cartoon by famous cartoonist, Mana Neyestani, published on Iran Wire.com and Mana Neyestani’s Facebook page in September 2014...... 74

3-1 Shadmehr Aghili’s authorized album cover released in 1999...... 107

3-2 Arian Band photographed in Tehran (Arian Band Official Website)...... 107

4-1 Graffiti by Black Hand depicting a female football fan holding up washing detergent instead of a trophy, wearing washing gloves and Iran’s national football team shirt (Dehghan 2014)...... 151

4-2 Screenshot from YouTube, Tehran by The Ways (The Ways Tehran 2009). ... 156

4-3 Online Poll on ElectroqutE’s Facebook Fan Page (ElectroqutE Facebook Page 2014)...... 157

LIST OF EXAMPLES

Example page

2-1 Electric Guitar Melody from the Song “Gole Yakh.” ...... 71

4-1 “Shahre Man Koo?” Verses 1 and 2 Vocal Melody...... 152

4-2 “Shahre Man Koo?” Verse 3 Vocal Melody...... 152

4-3 “Tehran” Vocal Melody Line...... 154

4-4 “Tehran” Backing Vocal Melody Line...... 156

4-5 “Ghesse Zir Zamin” introductory melody played by violin...... 159

4-6 “Ghesse Zir Zamin” Verses’ Melody...... 159

Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Music

VOICES OF A REBELLIOUS GENERATION: CULTURAL AND POLITICAL RESISTANCE IN IRAN’S UNDERGROUND ROCK MUSIC

Shabnam Goli

December 2014

Chair: Larry Crook Major: Music

Iran’s popular music scene has witnessed drastic transformations since the

Islamic Revolution of 1979. An underground rock music genre (URM) and an underground musical scene emerged in Iran in the late 1990s as a site for the expression of resistance to social, cultural, and political issues that plague modern

Iranian society. As an emergent genre, URM has provided the means for various forms of socio-cultural and socio-political critiques of the status quo that engage with the realities of life in modern Iranian society. This thesis explores the role of URM as a social and political expression of new forms of identity among youth in contemporary

Iran.

Iran’s youth music has not received the attention it deserves, although over 60 percent of Iran’s 73 million people are less than 30 years old. This thesis argues that while previous research has focused on the circumstances under which URM is produced and disseminated, it has overlooked URM’s significant role as an expression of youth rebellion and defiance.

Understanding rock music as inherently resistant, defiant and confrontational and perceiving URM fans and musicians as an identifiable, unified, discrete, and subordinate social group helps clarify that URM is not a mere imitation of Western rock music in a developing country. URM has become a means of expression for the Iranian youth who face state’s censorship in various aspects of their lives.

This thesis employs an analytical and interpretive approach to the study of URM that will lead to a better understanding of underground rock musicians’ agendas and socio-political purposes. This study uses the data gathered from informants through interviews, observations, documentaries as well as musical and lyrical analysis of six sample songs. This research shows that the role of rock music in Iran has been transformed since its arrival in early 1960s; from a dance genre associated primarily to entertainment to a genre for raising consciousness and prescribing avenues for social and political resistance.

The significance of this critical and analytical research lies in its objective to shed light on an illegal youth musical idiom in a country in which social and political realities are misrepresented through censored media. Understanding URM’s role in expressing youth concerns will lead to a better recognition of realities in modern Iran.

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

Popular music studies did not gain academic significance and sustained interest in ethnomusicology until second half of the 20th century through the research of some of the most prominent scholars of the field such as Charlie Keil (1967), Bruno Nettl (1985).

With the recognition of the significance of academic studies of popular music, more and more scholars noticed the complex issues and interplays involved in the world’s popular music. Having emerged in the late 1990’s as a youth musical idiom; underground music has developed enormously in the past ten years in Iran. A variety of genres and styles have blossomed from the seed that was planted at least forty years ago during the processes of modernizing and westernizing the country. This thesis is a step taken toward understanding the intricacies of Iran’s rapidly growing “Underground Rock

Music” (URM), also known as Musiqi Zir Zamini in Farsi.1 My aim is to explore URM in order to understand its role and function in the modern society of Iran. Today, URM is primarily associated with young Iranians who were born after the Islamic revolution of

1979, have experienced war, censorship, global sanctions, and a host socio-political problems such as unemployment. In this context, URM has provided the Iranian youth with a medium to express their concerns, emotions, and defiant ideas.

Background of the Research

Islamic revolution of 1979 is a significant turning point in Iran’s modern history.

During the first decade after the revolution, the unstable government dealt with some

1 In Chapter 3, I provide a comprehensive discussion on the meaning and significance of the term “Zir Zamini” that means “Underground” in Farsi. “Zir Zamin,” meaning basement and underground in Farsi, has gained particular significance as a consequence of its association with the private domain of life in modern Iran and a place in which illegal production and performance of music, and other activities, is kept hidden from the public eye (for further discussions refer to Chapter 3).

major issues including drastic cultural and social change, the Iran-Iraq war that lasted for eight years and the resulting economic recession. The government spent its resources to stabilize the country in cultural, social, economic, and political arenas. The

Cultural Revolution (Enghelāb-e Farhangi), which begun in 1980 and lasted for 5 years, was the government’s attempt to Islamize the universities and educational institutes(Sobhe 1982). With the shutdown of universities and significant changes in music and movie industry, Iran underwent a decade of oppression and drastic transition into a theocratic state.

I was born during this historical period; five years after the revolution. Labeled as

“The Children of the Revolution,” people of my generation grew up within the Islamic framework and ideologies imposed on them at schools and in the society. As a “Muslim

Iranian Girl,” I identified/ was identified with three major ideas. 1. I had to believe, act, and behave according to Islamic ideologies. 2. School and society taught me to take pride in my nationality and reject the Western influence that could decay my personality.

Nationalistic pride and emotions did not approve of any Western-impacted aspects of life. 3. Being a female in a patriarchal society limited my personal freedom and confined my progress and independence.

While the public society expected me to act in a certain way according to the three key aspects of my existence, the intimate environment of home gave me some freedom of choice. Although music was forbidden except for officially recognized religious chants and heroic, revolutionary songs played on the television and radio and taught at schools, the private domain of home provided me with the access to all sorts of Persian and Western music. My parents were fans of Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Joan

Baez, Demis Roussos, Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa, and Queen. I was surrounded by

Googoosh, Haydeh, Ebi, Ahdieh, Shajarian, Farhad and Kourosh Yaghmaie.2 Cassette tapes, along with all other forbidden forms of entertainment such as playing cards, backgammon, and chess as well as other banned items, were hidden somewhere down in our family’s basement and the fear of police raids was a part of my childhood.

The paradoxes I experienced at home and in the society had tremendous impact on my life as I hit puberty and through my adulthood. My hometown, Mashhad, is considered the most religious city of Iran as Shia’s eighth holy Imam is buried there.

Therefore, Islamic regulations are more strictly reinforced in Mashhad than other parts of the country. Paradoxically, Mashhad is also home to Iran’s second largest community of underground musicians and bands (Figure 1-1). The contradictions in public and private spheres are one of the major characteristics of modern Iranian society and navigating Iranian society requires constant transition between these two domains of life.

Young Iranians, thus, face and deal with these contractions along with other political, economic, and cultural issues on a daily basis. My peers and I share the story of a life under pressure, censorship, previously defined life path to go onto, and suppression. Members of Iran’s young generation have sought new ways to express their emotions, experiences, and dissatisfactions with the government. Iran’s modern cinema, photography, web logging, theater, poetry, literature and music are almost entirely devoted to expressing the youths’ resistance, defiance, and dissatisfaction against what is imposed on them in the society and by the government.

2 All famous Iranian pop stars and traditional musicians.

This thesis uncovers the expression of resistance through URM in its lyrical, visual, and musical aspects. My aim is to study URM in its social and cultural context in order to shed new light on socio-political and socio-cultural complexities of contemporary Iranian society. The complexities are addressed through this music and impact its creators and consumers. Underground musicians, therefore, stand as representatives of their generation. Their music consequently, can be expressive of the youth concerns, emotions, lifestyles, and dreams. There are of course exceptions, but this study aims at including the most prominent musicians and songs that can be considered as representatives of a large segment of modern and urban Iranian youth.

Knowing that over 60 percent of Iran’s 73 million population is under 30 years old helps explain the significance of youth culture as a vehicle to understand Iranian society

(Memarian and Nesvaderani 2014). This research attempts to address and answer the following central questions:

1. What is the significance and meaning of URM?

2. When and how did URM emerge in Iran’s music scene? What socio-cultural and socio-political elements influenced its emergence and development?

3. Under what conditions is URM produced, performed, and distributed? How has the situation changed since its emergence?

4. What does it sound like? What are the lyrical contents?

5. How does the society and government react to URM?

6. Who are underground musicians? What is their life like? What are their motives for creating URM? What are their concerns, issues and dreams?

7. What makes URM a rebellious musical genre in Iran?

These central questions lie at the basis of my study, and I attempt to fully discuss each one of them throughout five Chapters of this thesis.

Review of Literature

The scholarship on Iran’s music used to focus primarily on Persian classical and folk musics particularly through the research of Stephen Blum (1972; 1974), Ella Zonis

(1965; 1973), and Bruno Nettl (1972a; 1974a; 1974b). A remarkable number of studies of Persian music deals with theoretical systems, instruments, performing practices, and musicians of classical and art musics. Stephen Blum (1974) and Ameneh Youssefzadeh

(2002a) mainly concentrated on the studies of regional and folk musics of various regions around the country. There are, however, scholars such as Bruno Nettl (1972) and Laudan Nooshin (2005) who have done extensive research in both classical and popular musics of Iran and developed expansive scholarship on the intersection of the local and the global under the influence of globalization and Westernization throughout

Iran’s history.

With the growth in the population of Persian diaspora all around the world and different musical idioms associated with these communities, scholars such as Farzaneh

Hemmasi (2010; 2013) and Hamid Naficy (1998) devoted in-depth studies to the understanding of Persian diasporic and exile musics. As a result of the diversification of styles and genres of Persian music in the recent years, scholars of music have shifted their attention from traditional and folk musics to urban musical genres including various subgenres of popular music and fusions of classical and art music with non-Iranian musical elements. Nooshin (2005), Youssefzadeh (2002), Mark LeVine (2008), Prindle

(2014), Bronwen Robertson (2012) are some of the music scholars who have noted the important musical and cultural changes that are manifest in Iran’s underground music.

As the musical and cultural dialogues between the West and East become more noticeable in different genres of Persian music, more scholars and ethnomusicologists

are attracted to the study of new styles and subgenres of Persian music and their associated cultural and social issues, just in the same way that larger scholarship on musics of the Middle East is developing in subject areas and perspectives.

Laudan Nooshin, an ethnomusicologist studying Persian popular and traditional music, is among the earliest scholars to have conducted ethnographic and historical research on Iran’s underground music scene. Her several book chapters and articles addressing Persian music are indicative of her interest in different social and cultural issues in modern Iran. Among her studies on different styles and genres of Persian music, Nooshin dedicated some of her research to the study of URM with an emphasis on the nature of this music-making activity and the circumstances under which underground musicians pursue their musical career (Nooshin 2005; 2004). She defines underground music by discussing the socio-cultural elements that impact its recognition and production in the society (Nooshin 2005). Her fieldwork, done in Tehran in early

2000’s, provides a broad image of the lives of a sample of underground musicians

She explains .(زیرزمین :making their Zir Zamini music (URM) in basements (Zir Zamin the position of music in both pre- and post-revolutionary Iran, clarifies the regulations governing music production in Iran, and uses some musicians and bands as examples of her observations. She addresses the peripheral position of URM in Iranian society and considers it as “an empowered forum in which young Iranians are making their voices heard” (Nooshin 2005: 489).

In addition to Laudan Nooshin’s research, Bronwen Robertson’s book

Reverberations of Dissent is a recent publication that deals with Iran’s URM (2012).

Robertson broadly examines URM in its political, social and cultural contexts. Starting

with a short history of popular music in Iran and a brief introduction to significant Persian pop stars, Robertson discusses the underground rock scene with a focus on the challenges that underground musicians face in their musical careers. Robertson deals with significant URM bands and musicians residing in Tehran, some of which are discussed in Nooshin’s studies as well. He briefly discusses one song from each musician in regard to its lyrical contents and broadly addresses musical aspects such as characteristic instrumentation, vocal timbre, harmony and modulations (2012: 115).

Robertson’s ethnographical research provides the material for a personal narrative of what he witnessed and experienced in Iran’s illegal musical scene during his stay in

Tehran. Labeling underground music as “Unofficial,” he creates a new scholarly discourse, which will be addressed in Chapter 3. His main focus is on URM as the expression of national identity and Iranian-ness.

Scholarship on Iran’s rock music also includes the book Heavy Metal Islam by

Mark LeVine that is devoted to the study of metal music in the Arab world (2008). Each chapter of this book focuses on the situation of metal music and metal heads’ lives in one of six different Muslim countries including Morocco, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Iran.

LeVine aims at finding and addressing similarities and differences present in these six countries in regard to metal music. Briefly discussing the political and social situation of post-revolutionary Iran and the position of metal music in the society, LeVine attempts to prove that metal music has helped Iranian society move forward and open up the public sphere. In the chapter on Iran, one of the main questions he aims to answer is why “Mullahs” in Iran hate metal music. LeVine’s perspective informs my discussion of what pushes URM musicians back into the covert arena of underground activity. LeVine

considers metal music as a vehicle for cultural expression just in the same way as

URM. By investigating the living condition of metal music lovers and briefly exploring the history of metal and rock music in Iran, he examines the position of metal music in the society at large. His other article “Doing the Devil's Work: Heavy Metal and the Threat to Public Order in the Muslim World,” also discusses how metal music is viewed in

Islam. Here he uses Iran’s political, cultural, and religious setting as instances and evidence to prove his claim that metal lovers are using metal music against the social and political oppressions in Iran (LeVine 2009). Similar to Nooshin and Robertson, he conducted his field research in Tehran, Iran’s largest city.

Jeremy Prindle’s recent master’s thesis is also dedicated to the study of Iran’s heavy metal music (2014). His fieldwork took place in Armenia, during a metal music festival during which he met Iranian underground heavy metal musicians. While focusing on cultural and musical aspects associated with heavy metal music, he attempted to show how Iran’s political and cultural situation has influenced the production and performance of underground music and in what ways Iranian metal music differs from its Western counterpart. Aside from his main concentration, which is introducing heavy metal music and musicians’ lifestyles in Iran, he briefly discusses a sample of songs’ lyrics to provide an overview of the lyrical contents of Iranian heavy metal music. He also investigates the history of heavy metal music in Iran and how it found its place as a musical genre in Persian music scene.

Additional English language scholarship on Iran’s underground music is Heather

Rastovak’s article titled “Contending with Censorship: The Underground Music Scene in

Urban Iran” that looks at underground music from a different perspective and in its

broad sense regardless of specific genres (2009). Rastovak studies underground music as means for youth to construct national and global identities and their encounters through this music. Highlighting the dissenting nature of underground music, Rastovak first introduces underground music and musicians, and then focuses on the global dialogues that take place through this music. Her main focus is on the “State’s

Censorship” and tight control over the production, performance and distribution of underground music in Iran.

In addition to English scholarship on Iran’s underground music, there are two books and one article written in Farsi: Songs of the Underground (Āvāzhāye Zir Zamin,

by Ebrahim Nabavi, The Sociology of Underground Music (Jāme’e (آوازهای زیرزمین

by Pourya Maftoon, and (جامعه شناسی موسیقی زیرزمینی ,Shenāsie Musighie Zir Zamini

an ("موسیقی زیرزمینی در ایران ,”Underground Music in Iran” (“Moosighié Zir Zamini Dar Iran“ article by Masoud Kosari (Maftoon 2012; Nabavi 2013; Kosari 2009).3 Both of these books were published digitally outside Iran, while the article was published inside Iran in the journal of Art and Literature, section of sociology. Examination of these books and the article sheds light on the viewpoints of Iranian authors. Kosari’s article, having been published in an authorized Persian4 journal, shows the differences in Iranian authors’ viewpoints under varied political conditions. While other scholars examine Iran’s underground music as an important youth musical idiom that reveals realties of modern

3 Ebrahim Nabavi is a political figure, author, researcher, journalist and satirist. He also serves various positions in Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance as well as the Ministry of Interior and Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Masoud Kosari is an associate professor of communication in Tehran University, school of social sciences. Pourya Maftoon is a rock and heavy metal musician who has been active in Iran’s both authorized and underground music scene since late 1980s.

4 Persian and Farsi are used interchangeably to refer to the language of Iranians. Iranian and Persian are also used interchangeably to refer to the nationality.

Iranian society, Kosari believes Iran’s underground music is a dangerous phenomenon that is against Iranian cultural norms, and a socio-cultural problem that needs to be studied and solved (2009: 127). In his article, Kosari aims at understanding the reasons for the emergence and growth of Iran’s underground music as a youth cultural issue so as to inform the government on ways to control it. Kosari’s views and analyses of Iran’s underground music are restricted to defining it and discussing some of the major underground rock and rap musicians.

Ebrahim Nabavi’s book, Songs of the Underground, is a long narrative of personal memory along with historical and analytical points about Iran’s popular music in general and rock music more specifically (Nabavi 2013). Nabavi’s main objective is to write the history of rock music in Iran, but he also explores other genres and styles, from traditional and folkloric to rap. Beginning with the significant question of how to define rock, this eleven-chapter book explores almost everything related to Persian popular music, a very broad and general approach that prevents the book from concentrating on its central point: investigating the history of rock music in Iran. By discussing various bands and musicians and through investigating the lyrical contents of sample songs,

Nabavi explores all Western-impacted musical genres in Iran from the past to present.

This book informs my own discussion on the history of rock music in Iran and Nabavi’s extensive interviews with musicians and archival research benefitted the historical section of this thesis enormously.

Pourya Maftoon’s book explores Iran’s social and cultural situation regarding the position of underground music (2012). Having participated as an underground musician himself, Maftoon expresses his own personal ideas and understandings of underground

music. He criticizes the Iranian government and attacks its policies regarding rock and heavy metal music. His book is in general a reaction to a government and a society that do not approve of rock and heavy metal music. Maftoon discusses different genres as he examines pop, rock, and rap, but does not analyze or study URM in-depth. As a narrative expression of own personal ideas and experience, his scholarship does not critically and analytically explore URM, its associated issues, and its resistant nature. It does, however, provide important first-hand experience from a musician’s point of view and I used this book as a source for understanding the personal ideas of a former underground musician in Iran.

Masoud Kosari’s article “Underground Music in Iran” studies underground music through the lens of the government, which is different from other viewpoints in the literature (Kosari 2009). The author explored underground music as a local-global phenomenon and tried to investigate the interaction between this music and the youth.

With a historical overview of the birth and growth of underground music, he introduces some eminent musicians and bands active in Iran’s underground rock and rap. He defines underground music differently from previously discussed scholars; an interesting point which will be discussed further in Chapter 3. Kosari highlights the rebellious nature of underground music by emphasizing the music’s role in shaping the youths’ identity and describes underground music as a dangerous cultural phenomenon that negatively impacts the youth of Iran. He emphasizes that Iranian and Persian sociologists and their scholarship have not given sufficient attention to this extremely important cultural entity. He concludes that underground music should be viewed as a warning to the society and that appropriate cultural policies should be implemented to

help bringing these musicians out of the shadows, where their music can be monitored before distribution. This article’s significance lies in the fact that it reflects the views of an author who views underground music in a similar way as the government.

All of the scholars discussed so far have noticed significant aspects of underground music; its rebellious nature, its uncensored and direct lyrical contents, its soundscape, and its associated cultural and social aspects. While some scholars have used the label of underground music as an umbrella for a wide range of musical styles and have not concentrated on a specific genre, others such as Robertson or Prindle have focused more directly on the sub-genres of rock and heavy metal. Almost none of this literature includes substantial musical analysis. Except for Robertson who explores and discusses timbre and instrumentation, discussion of the music itself is largely absent from this literature. Additionally, these scholars have either used the term

“underground music” or, like Robertson, have invented etic labels such as “unofficial” music to explain the conditions of production, performance and distribution of this musical terrain rather than discussing its social and cultural function in depth.

In addition to the scholarship on Iran’s popular music and URM, I consulted Jalal

Al-e Ahmad’s major book, Gharbzadehgi (Westoxication, West-struckness), in which he coins the term “Gharbzadehgi” and discusses the dialectics of Westernization and

Westoxication as processes of modernization. Al-e Ahmad believes modernization and

Westernization led to a shallow, and destructive imitation of the West for which Iranian society was not ready in the late ‘60s (1982). Al-e Ahmad’s discussions on

Westoxication and “Gharbzadegi” inform my analysis of both URM and pre- revolutionary Persian rock in Chapter 5.

Furthermore, I examined Bruno Nettl’s Eight Urban Musical Cultures: Tradition and Change (1978), in which he brilliantly discusses two concepts of modernization and

Westernization and clarifies how they led to significant transformations in world popular music production and consumption and its studies in the past few decades.

To Bruno Nettl, Westernization and modernization are two processes with contrasting incentives. They are similar in the sense that that they both represent different ways of adaptation of Western culture in non-Western societies. However, while Westernization is accepting the principles and values of the West, modernization is taking advantage of Western technologies and techniques in order to maintain the indigenous traditions (Nettl 1978: 432-433). Such processes have resulted in intercultural relationships among nations and have impacted cultural practices including music. Furthermore, changes in power relations culminating in the dichotomy of domination and resistance in the modern world created diverse cultural reactions from exoticism and cultural imperialism to cultural borrowing and homogenization. The colonized nations reacted against colonialism and capitalism in a variety of forms ranging from cultural borrowing and syncretism to nationalism and romanticism.

Popular music of non-Western nations, for instance, is a clear embodiment of

Nettl’s concept of Westernization. The preservation of national heritage and indigenous musics loses its significance to absorbing the modern and Western musical and extra musical elements in order to enter the global music market. Consequently, a great degree of world popular music that has entered the global music market has become homogenized and the influence of global encounters can be easily traced.

However, not all nations react to these external forces in the same way. A different response to such powerful global and Western encounters is glocalization.

Through the reception of global forms in local contexts and reframing them into terms that are locally meaningful, musicians in the global south create musical forms that embody Nettl’s concept of modernizations. In other words, local musicians take advantage of Western technologies and systems so as to preserve their own culture and elevate their community. Recontexulaziation of global forms to enrich and enhance local musics as a reaction to cultural imperialism is manifest through popular musics of many nations such as Yothu Yindi and Iranian URM. Indigenization, as Christopher A.

Waterman puts it, is another form of glocalization through which indigenous musicians alter global influences in order to empower their own music and community just in the same way that jújù bands transpose piano riffs and use microphones and sound systems in the production and performance of their local music (quoted in Roseman

2000: 33).

To Nettl, it is important to fully understand the two concepts and their similarities and differences as well as the ways they have impacted music and musical scholarship.

In Chapter 5, I drew on his discussions of both concepts of modernization and

Westernization in relation to Al-e Ahmad’s concept of Westoxication in order to shed light on URM and pre-revolutionary Persian rock as manifestation of Westoxication, glocalization, and indigenization. I elucidate the concepts and perspectives that explain the complex processes involved in the creation and circulation of URM and facilitate understanding its function and position in modern-day Iranian society.

Purpose and Significance of the Research

The review of literature given above is indicative of the abundance of studies on

Iran’s underground music and the significance it has gained as a means of youth expression since the early 2000’s. Among this literature devoted to study of underground music, only a few attempt to investigate this music as an act of rebellion and its musicians as social activists in a conservative society. The significance of the thesis is, thus, its concentration on the investigation of socio-cultural and socio-political issues addressed through URM.

I have drawn on all the literature reviewed in the previous section from historical, cultural, and analytical perspectives to find unaddressed issues in order to raise and respond to new questions including URM’s function in contemporary Iranian society.

This research takes URM as its main focus due to the fact that previous academic scholarship on URM does not encompass its associated socio-cultural and socio- political implications. Different scholars have labeled and defined this music from different perspectives and with varied approaches. There are similarities and differences and each one highlights or overlooks some cultural and socio-political aspects associated with this music. I discuss how and why previous labels (illegal, unofficial, unauthorized, and independent) are not completely inclusive of all different aspects of this music as a form of musical rebellious expression. It is also important to notice that as a dynamic art form in a dynamic context, the nature of URM is in constant transformation and so are the definitions and labels that attempt to define it. Therefore, one of my main aims in this study is to discuss different labels and explain why URM is the most comprehensive term to name this music. Furthermore, I put heavy weight on

the musical and lyrical aspects of this music in order to explain in what ways URM can be understood as a subversive musical genre.

By taking advantage of the previous scholarship, this thesis brings newer issues to attention, answers more focused questions about URM and Iran’s underground musical scene in its current political and cultural situation, and raises new questions to initiate further future research on URM or other genres of Iran’s underground music. It not only complements and expands the previous literature, but also highlights significant untouched aspects of URM. Additionally, my viewpoints as a former underground musician equip me with the emic position of an insider and helps me to shed light on a variety of issues which have been left unnoticed or considered as insignificant in previous literature.

Studying and understanding URM as a vehicle for youth expression and a medium for addressing socio-political and socio-cultural issues helps understanding

Iranian society and raises awareness about the situation of life in a country under heavy censorship and the close governmental supervision of media, arts, and all cultural forms. URM represents the young society of modern Iran, a representation that has not been tailored by the government. It can therefore be considered as a more transparent and truthful account of the youth’s oppositional perspectives. Through analysis of URM songs, we can learn more about our fellow musicians pursuing their musical career and dreams with all their difficulties. The results of this research will lead to a better global and local understanding of socio-political and socio-cultural circumstances of today’s

Iranian society. I am hopeful that this understanding will eventually positively impact the quality of life for all Iranian musicians and the Iranian society in general.

Methodology

This thesis claims that URM is used by Iranian youth to address various social, cultural and political issues that are present in modern Iranian society and expresses the youth’s rebellion and dissent against them. In order to discuss and justify this claim, this research is based on three primary methodologies of data gathering and analysis: fieldwork, historical research, and the musical and lyrical analysis of a sample of URM songs.

Fieldwork, in its both virtual and location-based senses, included the collection and analysis of data provided by informants residing in the United States, Europe, and

Iran. Face-to-face fieldwork for this research was limited to one short trip to California to meet older rock musicians and political figures and authors who immigrated to the

United States in the early years after the revolution and now reside in Los Angeles.

Moreover, I took advantage of my own position as an insider and used my personal experience as a former member of URM. My involvement with URM also helped me enormously in contacting informants and gaining their trust for participating in my research.

E-fieldwork serves as the basis of much of this research due to the financial and political issues involved in traveling to Iran. I had to rely on the Internet and online resources to gather data and contact the informants. Virtual fieldwork has recently gained importance in ethnographic research in ethnomusicology. Timothy Cooley and others have noted the importance of the Internet as a medium for current ethnomusicological research (Barz and Cooley 2008). While live face-to-face human relationships and interactions continue to play a central role in ethnomusicological fieldwork, virtual interactions via the Internet have proven to have advantages for certain

types of research and in certain conditions. The unfeasibility of traveling to Iran was the primary reason for initially exploring virtual fieldwork in this research, but later it was the significant position of Internet use in Iranian society and, more importantly, in the production and distribution of URM that underscored the benefits and value of e- fieldwork.

Despite the Iranian government’s attempts to control, block or localize its impact in the recent years, the Internet has grown enormously in terms of number of users and has gained increasing significance as a medium for interacting with the outside world and for circumventing state censorship. According to the information given on Internet

World Stat’s website, Iran is the second biggest user of the Internet in the Middle East with an estimated 46.7% of the population using the Internet despite the fact that Iran ranks among the countries with the lowest Internet speed in the world (Internet World

Stat 2014; Rezaian 2013). Interactive websites and web platforms such as Facebook and YouTube are blocked in Iran, but It is estimated that 58% of Iranian Internet users have active Facebook accounts; a fact that proves the importance of Facebook in young

Iranian lives (Knowles 2014).

Therefore, the Internet’s significant role for this research has two major aspects.

First, it has enabled people, more specifically the youth, to express their thoughts more freely and contact the outside world in ways free of local censorship. Second, it has enabled underground musicians in Iran to distribute their works both within Iran and outside the country. Several websites such as YouTube and Myspace are commonly used for the dissemination of the URM songs. Iranian music broadcasting websites such as RadioJavan, Iran Rock Radio, Bia2, and Tehransit, which are launched from

both inside and outside Iran, have also achieved an important position in the distribution of Persian songs, both permitted and underground. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter have also enabled underground musicians to receive feedback from their audience via the Internet. Today, there are numerous Facebook fan pages for different musicians and bands. There are also many Facebook groups targeting certain communities of musicians and fans like Iran’s Rock Society, Rockdoun, Society of

Iranian Rock Supporters, Introducing Iranian Rock and Metal Bands, and Community of

Iranian Rock and Metal Musicians. A great number of personal weblogs on which discussions about URM songs’ lyrics and chords is another indicator of the importance of the Internet in the development of URM as a divergent musical genre.

Furthermore, I used my own personal Facebook account as a place to post different questions for the general audience and to initiate discussions about the way

URM is currently perceived, consumed, and reacted to in Iranian society. The Internet also provided me with the possibility of contacting and communicating with many of my informants regardless of their location. One of my primary aims was to avoid concentrating on one specific location such as Tehran, for gathering my data since I considered this a limiting factor of much of the previous scholarship that was done through more traditional ethnographic fieldwork in Tehran (LeVine 2008; Nooshin 2005;

Robertson 2012). This extended framework was made possible by the use of the

Internet as I interviewed many musicians and scholars residing inside and outside Iran via Skype, Viber, and Oovoo.5

5 Oovoo and Viber are Internet-based communication softwares that are more competent with Iran’s low speed Internet. Unfortunately however, they were not much better than Skype which is filtered in Iran either. Very low speed of the Internet resulted in numerous disconnections in every communication.

Interviews consisted of intensive, structured, sometimes multi-session discussions with selected musicians and informants, as well as short, impromptu interviews with associated individuals including audience members, managers, concert planners, journalists, and video directors. It is also important to mention that all informants were meticulously selected based on their relation and familiarity with Iran’s rock music, or in particular URM. The objective of the interviews was to investigate and understand the lives, concerns, emotions, and ideologies of these musicians, and the way they perceive their own and their music’s position in the society. In the interviews, I asked the informants about the definitions of selected terminology (rock, resistance, underground music, etc.), personal issues in their music careers, personal views on certain social, cultural and political issues related to URM, and the goals and purposes that they envision for their musical lives. During all personal and group discussions, I worked hard to make sure that I perceived the given data accurately and that I was not directing or guiding the informants to respond in specific ways. Some musicians were contacted and re-interviewed after I analyzed the data in order to check the accuracy of the claims. Additionally, I have taken advantage of series of recorded interviews with some underground musicians and lyricists by different television channels as well as few documentaries made about Iran’s underground rock music (Rock on 2012;

Arāmesh Bā Diāzpām Dah 2007; Scorpio 2010; The Ways 2011). As a native speaker, communication with Iranian musicians and other informants was conducted primarily in

Farsi. I aimed at providing an objective and literal English translation of interviews in order to convey the interviewees’ opinions most thoroughly and ensured that no meanings were lost in translation.

Despite the advantages of the Internet, it is important to understand the disadvantages of using the Internet as a research tool as well. First of all, as Katherine

Meizel mentions in “Idol Fields: Mapping the Multisite Ethnography of a Television

Show” in information on the Internet can be ephemeral (Meizel 2008: 95). Websites remove and add data constantly, and thus, some already used and cited information might not be available sometime later.

Furthermore, not all online data is trustworthy and valuable for consideration. Its most important downside for me, however, was the fact that I was unable to establish trust with some musicians. Although I used my network of acquaintances as references to gain informants’ trust, there were many instances of musicians who did not accept invitations to talk to me because of the fact that software would potentially allow me record their voices or make videos without their consent. I always gave explanations about myself and the purposed of my work and asked for permission before recording.

However, Iran’s political situation justifies their fear. A face-to-face encounter and conversation would likely have been different and I might have been able to build friendship with some of those cases. Eventually, some of these musicians agreed to talk via written forms of commination including email and Facebook messages. Despite such shortcomings, I used the Internet as one of my main tools throughout this research and learned a great deal about the significance of the Internet in suppressed societies, especially among the youth.

Historical research included the collection and analysis of important older songs, photographs, books, and magazine articles. I also drew on the information I had gathered through my discussions with informants as well as consulting a number of

books and articles that address history of popular music in Iran (Chehabi 1999; Nabavi

2013; Nettl 1972; Nooshin 2004; 2007; Youssefzadeh 2000). This work was aimed at providing a historical account of Persian rock music from early 1960s through the analysis archival data, interviews, and music.

My emphasis on URM as a musical idiom required musical and lyrical analysis of a sample of URM songs that were selected based on their relevance to this research’s main questions. Musical analysis of the songs, both the early rock songs and latest

URM hits, and transcriptions include chord analysis, notation of certain sections of pieces to highlight important melodic, rhythmic or harmonic points, and analysis of forms of pieces.

Lyrical analysis consists of the translation and interpretation of the songs in order to describe and reflect on main themes addressed in URM. Musicians’ views on their songs’ lyrics also inform my analysis of the lyrical contents. During the interviews I asked the musicians about their songs’ lyrics and the main ideas they aimed at conveying through texts. Analysis reveals that URM lyrics are highly influenced by

Persian poetry and are filled with figures of speech, metaphors, ironies, and similes. As a consequence, translation into English required clarification of local terminology to fully explain the meanings of the lyrics. Therefore, I chose to translate them figuratively and aimed at conveying the meaning of the lyrics rather than providing word-by-word literal translations. As a result of the abundance of figures of speech as well as social and cultural codes associated with the texts, my analysis provides interpretation of the lyrics in addition to the translations.

Once data collection was completed through virtual and actual fieldwork, interviews, transcriptions, and translation of the lyrics, I began the process of data analysis. This process consisted of the interpretive analysis of all extra-musical phenomena, explanations of how, why, where, and when a musical event takes place, and the analysis of the music itself. The result of this data collection and analysis helped me move toward validating my main hypotheses and eventually took shape as this ethnographic and historic research on URM in modern-day Iran.

Plan of the Thesis

This thesis is organized in five chapters. Chapter 1 provides the background and context for this research, a review of relevant literature, and a discussion of methodology. Chapter 2 deals with largely with the pre-revolutionary history of western- influenced genres of popular music in Iran with a focus on the importance of rock music.

Here, the emergence and development of rock music in Iran, as a branch of popular music, is highlighted in order to provide a foundation for the investigation of contemporary rock in Iran. In this Chapter, I delineate the elements that were involved in the birth and early development of rock music in pre-revolutionary Iran and how early rock was defined in the society. Understanding the differences between pre- revolutionary rock and today’s URM shows how rock music functions and is interpreted in two different political and social contexts.

Chapter 3 is devoted to the examination of the political, social, and cultural changes during the thirty five years of the post-revolutionary Islamic government in order to elucidate how URM emerged as a consequence of political and cultural transformations of the Iranian society. Instead of reiterating the well-documented accounts of the production, performance and distribution of URM, Chapter 3 deals with

the development of URM since its emergence. State organizations that govern musical activities are discussed so that their impact on URM’s production and performance is clarified. Chapter 3 aims at shedding light on how and why URM emerged and developed under the influence of the state’s supervision. Understanding the socio- cultural and socio-political issues that influenced the birth and growth of URM in contemporary Iran leads to a better grasp of how it functions in contemporary Iran and provides the foundation for Chapter 4.

Chapter 4 concentrates on the musical and lyrical analyses of a sample of URM hits (five songs by different bands and musicians) to discuss the political and socio- cultural resistance expressed through this music. While having an eye on the historical position and function of early rock music, this Chapter aims at illuminating issues that evoke dissatisfaction in Iranian society, the meaning of resistance and its various forms of expression in today’s Iran, and its delivery through URM.

Chapter 5, the concluding Chapter, uses the information gathered and presented throughout the research for supporting the main argument and claim of this thesis that

URM is a musical genre in which musicians voice opposition that criticizes the government for their actions in cultural, social, and political arenas. By linking all the findings through the ethnographic fieldwork, musical and lyrical analysis, and exploring the cultural and social codes addressed in URM songs, this study aims at providing a very detailed and focused account of URM as an oppositional musical genre which has also gained the significance of a subculture among the Iranian youth. By exploring the role of URM in modern-day Iranian society, this research offers a better understanding

of the current socio-cultural and socio-political situation in Iran as well as a more intensive overview of Iran’s musical activities under censorship and oppression.

Transliteration and Spelling of Farsi Words

In the thesis, I have italicized all Persian words that are not commonly used in

English and transliterated them. Song names are in quotation marks and Farsi songs names are not italicized in order to avoid their confusion with album titles. I have used the macron over “a” as in Shorā for the sound “aa” in words that are not commonly used

at the end of Persian words. If it is ه in English such as Tehran or Iran. I have omitted

with ,شریعه as in ,ع pronounced, I have put “h” to indicate the sound. I have represented

is represented by “kh” (Khorāsān) and the خ The letter .)مرجع( ’for instance Marja ,‘

,are represented with “gh.” However, “Q” is used in words such as Quran ق orغ letters

Qajar, or musiqi that are commonly spelled with “Q” instead of “gh.”

I have left people’s names according to individuals’ preferences. For instance, instead of Kāveh, I have written Kaveh. I have also used Persian alphabets, in addition to phonetic representation, for some specific words or phrases in order to avoid ambiguities. I hope this phonetic system helps the non-Persian speakers to pronounce the Persian words as accurately as possible while preserving their authentic pronunciation.

Figure 1-1. Iran’s map depicting major cities including Tehran, Mashhad (second largest city), Tabriz (third largest city), and etc. Tehran, Mashhad, Karaj (not marked on the map, fourth major city situated 20 kilometers (12 mi) west of Tehran at the foothills of the Alborz mountains,), Esfahan, Kerman, Ahvaz and Tabriz are some of the significant cities in which underground music is actively created and consumed (City Population 2014).

CHAPTER 2 HISTORY OF ROCK

In this Chapter, I provide a historical overview of the influx of Western music and the emergence of Western-influenced popular musical genres in Iran, in particular rock music. First, I explore the definition of popular music and provide a comprehensive definition for Persian popular music in its context. I attempt to investigate how it is perceived in the society and among its consumers in order to clarify what kind of music is being discussed throughout the Chapter. Then, I explore the history of rock music in

Iran with an emphasis on its social and cultural function in the Iranian society. I present a sample of the earliest Farsi rock songs’ lyrics and discuss typical instrumentation and aspects of melody and harmony to shed light on how early Persian rock sounded and what issues it addressed through its lyrics. Different social and cultural issues associated with this music in pre-revolutionary Iran are discussed so that the development of rock music in Iran from earliest songs to URM can be traced and explored. Furthermore, I introduce some of the most prominent bands and musicians who have been influential in the appearance and development of rock music in Iran.

Chapter 2’s main objective is to provide a comprehensive background for the discussion on how URM came into existent in late 1990s and how early rock impacted its emergence. In Chapter 5, the concluding Chapter, comparisons will be made between early Persian rock and today’s URM in order to shed light on the influence of Iran’s political transformations on music’s function and position in the Iranian society.

What is Persian Popular Music?

Scholars of popular music studies have aimed at defining popular music from different angles. While there are significant aspects of popular music which seem to be

its essential ingredients, scholars such as John Connell and Chris Gibson have concluded that “ there can be no formal definition of popular music” (Connell and

Gibson 2003). One central aspect of popular music is its link to modes of mass consumption and mass distribution. In other words, popular music can be a localized form of music that is able to transcend its spatial, social, and cultural boundaries and becomes appealing to large crowds, even outside its local frame. Popular music is involved in the dialectics of local and global; music that is transmitted from micro-level to macro-scale as Leyshon et al put it in the introductory chapter of The Place of Music

(Leyshon, Matless, and Revill 1998).

For Adorno, the commodification and monetization of popular music serve as its significant defining elements. He defines popular music as “a mass-produced, commodified, and standardized product, involving minimal creativity” (quoted in

Leyshon, Matless, and Revill 1998). Adorno’s critique of popular music as unoriginal and not creative is reflected in many early discussions of popular music in ethnomusicology. According to an early statement by Bruno Nettl, popular music in

Western society has been thought of as having four ingredients: it is urban in nature and in target audience, it is performed by trained but not highly trained musicians, it has a lower degree of sophistication compared to art music, and it is distributed through mass media and recordings (Nettl 1972: 218). Therefore, while a socially, culturally and musically comprehensive definition of popular music cannot be given, it can be concluded that popular music, as a genre, has some characteristics that distinguish it from other kinds of music. These aspects of popular music include its highly commercial nature, its association with urbanization, and its ability to transcend the local boundaries

as a result of mass production and mass consumption. Although Bruno Nettl considers popular music as less sophisticated and complex than art music, such attitude toward popular music does not exist among music scholars nowadays (1972: 218).

Persian popular music shares the aforementioned characteristics with Western popular music. Bruno Nettl defines Persian popular music by highlighting its differences from other Persian musical genres. To him, Persian popular music is the type of music that is neither Persian folk nor traditional music. Nettl emphasizes the urban and modern nature of Persian popular music by saying that it is mostly found in large cities such as Tehran (Nettl1972: 219). He also addresses its commercialized, commodified aspect by stating that it is easily accessible to large numbers of people because of its low cost (ibid.). According to Nettl, Persian popular music includes the four ingredients of Western popular music; however, it differs from its western counterpart in its content and form and in respects to level of innovation and change. In Iran, Nettl found popular music to be more innovative and forward-looking than Persian traditional music, which is as Nettl puts it is “a closed corpus” (ibid.). The idea of musical innovation is often thought as a characteristic linked closely to art music in the West, but in Persian music, popular music is highly innovative not the Persian traditional music. There are extensive studies on Persian traditional music and it is out of the scope of this thesis to thoroughly critique them (Farhat 2004; Nettl 1972; Zonis 1965). However, it is important to note that

Persian traditional music is founded on certain theoretical frameworks such as Dastgah and Radif that govern the production of musical works in similar ways that scales do in

Western music. Altering such frameworks is not “permissible” as Nettl observed (Nettl

1972: 219).

A more recent view is forwarded by Anthony Shay in his discussion of the meaning of Persian popular music in an article titled “The 6/8 Beat Goes On: Persian

Popular Music from Bazm-e Qajariyyeh to Beverly Hills Garden Parties” because he believes defining this term has been overlooked as a result of scholars and musicians’ hegemonic view over popular music (2000). Shay quotes Nettl on classification of

Persian popular music saying that it is a term “mainly used by Persian traditional musicians in order to denigrate the rest” (Shay 2000: 68). Despite the fact that Nettl categorized Persian popular music in three different branches, Shay believes Nettl’s classification of Persian popular music is not inclusive of all the different subgenres within Persian pop. To Shay, it is the consumer and the context that primarily defines

Persian popular music. Persian popular music encompasses a wide variety of instruments and timbres, vocal techniques, melodies and harmonic progressions.

Iranian pop stars, as Nettl also observed, frequently move between the different subgenres of Persian pop in order to appeal to larger audience within diverse cultural and social settings. This specific characteristic of Persian pop music intensifies its fluidity and dynamic nature.

In his book, Songs of the Underground, Ebrahim Nabavi defines Persian popular music by addressing the differences between this music and other genres such as folk, jazz, hip hop and rock. For Nabavi, Persian popular music is a commercialized, shallow, unintellectual and easy-listening genre. He emphasizes Persian popular music’s inferior position in relation to Western jazz, folk, and rock in relation to the lyrical contexts and amount of musical innovations (2013: 28-38).

The definition of Persian popular music as differentiated from other Persian music genres is highly dependent on audiences’ perception within its context. It is important to note that Persian popular music is linked to the broader popular culture that entered the country in the process of modernization in 1950s and 60s, and thus, has a variety of social and cultural associations. Heather Rastovac believes “ Iranians have utilized the term “pop” in order to describe all Western genres of music” (2010: 72). But, as she also notes, this concept of pop has changed with the overtime as Iranians gained greater access to and familiarity with Western music.

While popular music as a category often refers to all kinds of Western-impacted

Persian songs that utilized Western instruments, melodies, harmonies, and lyrical contents distinct from Persian traditional music; contemporary conceptions of Persian popular music is frequently related to the circumstances under which it is produced.

Iranian musicians and audiences tend to categorize popular music as dance or light music with shallow, mostly romantic, lyrics, particularly when it is imported from Los

Angeles. Whether it is produced inside or outside Iran, with government’s approval or in the underground, popular music is typically not considered a highly artistic musical form and is mostly viewed as mere entertainment lacking musical values.1 The use of six- eight metric organization, a typical feature of traditional Persian dance music, is another important signifier of Persian popular music as Shay has noted (2000).

Through my observations, Iranian audiences tends to differentiate Persian popular music from traditional and folk music based on the lyrical contents, vocal techniques, instrumentations, beat, and the overall aural and textual aspects of the

1 Further discussion of government’s approval and how it is gained is presented in Chapter 3.

music. Currently, with the emergence of various Western-related genres in underground scenes of Iran, people are not very concerned with specific definitions of various subgenres of popular music and tend to consume the music regardless of how it is labeled.

However, there appears to be a clear distinction made between Persian popular music and rock music. Persian popular music is a modernized and urban music that combines both Persian and Western musical elements and appeals to the mass, while rock music is Westernized to a higher degree, is more avant-garde in both musical and lyrical aspects, and is mostly associated with the youth culture in the urban areas. In Chapter

3, I will explore the distinctions between Persian popular and rock music and explain how musical, social and cultural associations of each genre influence their position in the society.

Historical Context of Persian Popular and Rock Music

Although Iran was never under direct colonial rule, it has been closely involved in the power struggles of Western countries to control the Middle East for strategic purposes. Its significant geopolitical situation in the Middle East as well as its natural resources including oil and gas attracted the attention of Russia and Great Britain in the nineteenth century (Nooshin 2004: 233). Western influence on various aspects of

Iranian society was initiated in the 1920s with Qajar kings’ visits to the West and the arrival of Russian and English people in Iran (Gheissari 1998). Extensive studies on the history of Western music in Iran by several scholars including H.E. Chehabi mark the entrance of Western music into Iran during Qajar dynasty (1999:143).

It was during Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s rule in the 1960s that Western- impacted popular music in Iran was given attention and the number of musicians and audiences increased dramatically. Mohammad Reza Shah’s emphasis on modernizing

and westernizing the country, particularly the cultural arena, resulted in mass production and dissemination of Persian popular music as an embodiment of modernization (ibid.:

243). Through his measures, radio and television devoted numerous hours of broadcast to western and Persian styles of popular music. Cafés, discos, hotels, and restaurants hired popular music stars to perform, and popular music was spread through urban areas of the country via live shows. According to Nooshin, the growth of popular music in Iran was the result of two major factors; 1. It was given support by the government as a positive symbol of modernization, 2. Persian traditional and folk music could not satisfy the “increasingly urbanized and cosmopolitan youth” (ibid.).

With the development of different styles of Persian popular music and emerging popularity of rock music in Britain and the United States, the earliest forms of rock music entered Iran’s musical scene in late 1960s (Nabavi 2013: 135). Numerous Italian,

French, English, Armenian and Russian musicians and bands visited urban Iran and performed in clubs and hotels. Armenian musicians, in particular, played a key role in the emergence and growth of Western-impacted musical genres in Iran (Aldoush

Alpanian, pers. comm.).2 In fact, it was largely through these visiting musicians that the electric guitar entered Iran in the second half of 1960s.3 In the late 1960s and early

1970s, music stores appeared in Tehran and other large cities in which Western instruments such as guitar and drums set could be found (Babak Chaman Ara, pers.

2 Aldoush Alpanian, Iranian-Armenian musician born in Ahvaz, was the founder of the famous rock band “The Hippies” in 1966 in Tehran.

3 Although it is believed that Vigen Dedarian, a famous Iranian-Armenian singer, was the first person that brought the guitar into the country, there is no written evidence to confirm this as accurate. Many older rock musicians believe it was through Western musicians or Iranians visiting the West that guitar entered the country.

comm.).4 There is no evidence of Western musical instruments being made inside Iran in the ‘60s. Both Aldoush and Babak informed me of the fact that there were few stores in Tehran in which Western musical instruments could be found, however, none of them was aware of any electric guitars or drums sets, for instance, being made in Tehran at the time. Technological difficulties and not having access to required equipment, knowledge, and expertise are among the factors that hindered Iranian instrument makers from manufacturing Western instruments. Such instruments are still being imported to the country as their local production has not become a possibility yet, despite technological advancements.5

Foreign musicians not only brought with them the latest musical styles of the time, but also brought the fashion and the youth culture associated with those musical styles. According to Ebrahim Nabavi, the Beatles, Rolling Stones, electric guitar, long hair, torn and shabby jeans, and colorful shirts were the huge sensations of late 1960s

(1340s in the Iranian calendar) in Iran. Music of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi

Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Elvis Presley not only swept across major urban areas such as Tehran and Isfahan, but also entered more conservative and traditional cities such as Kerman, which is located in the center of Iran (Nabavi 2013: 7-8).6 Nabavi’s narratives on how he encountered rock music as a teenager in dance clubs and house parties, and how he observed his young siblings’ passion for rock music testify to the

4 Traditional musical Instruments such as the Tār, Santur, and Tonbak have been made in Iran for a very long time. Today, there are large and small manufacturers of musical instruments in different parts of Iran, but they still mainly specialize in Persian traditional instruments rather than electric guitar for instance. However, I have uncovered no evidence of exactly when guitar and other Western instruments began to be made inside the country.

5 Persian electric instruments, such as electric Setār, are now made inside Iran and in local instrument making workshops (Babak Chaman Ara and Soroush Ghahremanloo, pers. comm.).

6 See Iran’s map at the end of Chapter 1.

significant role of rock music in the emerging youth culture of the time, even in the less urbanized areas of Iran (ibid.).

As the offspring of the state led initiatives for Westernization and modernization that influenced traditional Iranian society in variety of aspects, early rock music of the

1960s paved the way for the development of a subversive youth musical culture and an underground rock music movement four decades later. Except for Ebrahim Nabavi’s narrative on the history of rock music in Iran, I am aware of no other scholarship that details how rock music appeared and developed in Iran during its early stages in the

1960s (2013). However, there are two documentaries that deal with the history of rock music in Iran. Shahyar Kabiri’s Rock On (2012) discusses the history of rock in Iran and includes interviews with some of the most prominent figures of URM while another documentary titled Scorpio (2010), directed and produced by Farideh Saremi and Omid

Hashemlu, focuses on one of the major rock bands of the 1960s. In this documentary,

Scorpio members talk about their first encounters with rock music and provide a detailed account of their own social and musical experiences in the late 1960s Tehran.

The lack of material on the history of Iranian rock in the 1960s necessitates the following discussion on what early rock music in Iran sounded like, how it was defined by the musicians, and how it was perceived by the society.

The earliest rock musicians in Iran belonged to the upper middle class of the society. They spoke English, French, or Italian, and were wealthy enough to afford the foreign records that were legally imported to the country. In fact, as a result of

Mohammad Reza Shah’s attempts to westernize the country, Western music became

abundant in Iran.7 Records (including costly LPs) could be found in stores in large and small cities of Iran.8 Through these records and performances by Western bands’ in hotels, foreign embassies, and special clubs like German Club, musicians and audiences learned rock music. As Aldoush Alpanian, told me

I was 16 when I formed my first band “The Hippies” in Tehran. Before that we had blues and soul, but not rock. American military people lived in Iran and we had many American friends. There was also a lot of Italian, Russian, and French music on the radios. Oh man! We had all sorts of Western music. In fact, it was the abundance of Western music that led to the emergence of rock music as something new, avant-garde, Western, and of course, appealing to the youth. We listened to everything. The Beatles and Rolling Stones were more famous than other bands, but I loved Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. We bought the records and we listened to them, a thousand times, until they were totally damaged. We listened carefully, then we watched the Western musicians, and that was how we learned to play rock music (Aldoush Alpanian, pers. comm.).

According to Aldoush, some middle-class Iranian youth also had opportunities to visit other countries where they were exposed to the new sounds of rock music. Musician

Siavash Ghomeishi reports that

I was 15 when I went to England. The Beatles and Rolling Stones were in their musical peak. I was an amateur musician at the time. I was drowned in England’s music scene. I studied composition and played with English bands to make ends meet until I returned to Iran and joined rock bands (Siavash Ghomeishi quoted in Nabavi 2013: 134).9

7 Pop and other Westernized musical genres faced total ban and prohibition of production, consumption, and dissemination soon after the Islamic revolution of 1979 and among state’s attempts to Islamicize the society (Rastovac 2009: 56). Further discussion on government’s restriction of musical activities and import of Western/ Western-impacted Persian popular music is offered in Chapter 3.

8 Beethoven Music Store, now located on Enghelāb Street in Tehran is one of the oldest music stores in Iran and was among the first places in which Western LPs and tapes could be found. Four brothers, Karim, Ahad, Mohsen, and Abbas Chaman Ara, opened a little store in Manuchehri Street in Tehran in 1953 and then expanded it to a large record store and company. Today it is being managed by Babak Chaman Ara and serves as one of the most significant music stores in Iran (Ebrahim Nabavi and Babak Chaman Ara, pers. comm.).

9 Siavash Ghomeishi is among the most prominent composers and singers in Persian popular music. Ghomeishi, Shahram Shabpareh, Eddy, Homayun Jalali, and Kambiz Moeini formed a band called Rebels in late 60s to early 70s (Nabavi 2013: 136). The band was later disbanded and only Shahrãm and Siavash continued their musical career.

Musicians like Siavash and Aldoush were not satisfied by the music of Persian pop stars of the day such as Googoosh, Ebi, and Dariush but were taken with the international sounds of youth culture coming from England and the United States.

Moreover, they enjoyed the new styles of music and dance and the fashion associated with rock music more than the common six-eight beat rhythms and the dance songs that characterized Persian pop music. Furthermore, the youth enjoyed the sense of comradery and teamwork characteristic of rock bands a lot more than performing as solo vocalists similar to pop stars. Bahram Saeedi, guitarist of the band Scorpio, explained how deeply he was influenced by the Beatles as a band of four young boys who had been able to pursue their musical career and had actually become globally famous (Scorpio 2010).

In such a context, early rock bands were formed in cities in Iran including Tehran,

Isfahan, Ahvaz, Shiraz, and Tabriz. Rock musicians called their bands “Orchestras.”

While no musician gives good reasons for such label, it seems that early rockers in Iran were not familiar with the word “band” as a group of musicians. Orchestra, as a non-

Iranian and Western word, merely indicated a group of musicians to them so they used the term to refer to groups of rock musicians (Aldoush Alpanian, pers. comm.). Another explanation is that Iranians took a lot of their vocabulary from Russians and French and not from English; therefore, it is possible that the word “orchestra” was mainly used by the French or Russians at the time instead of the English word “Band.” Rock bands consisted of young, educated, middle and upper class males who performed covers of songs by the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, and Bob Dylan. According to members of Scorpio, they only covered “hot” English and American rock songs that

were imported to the country (Scorpio 2010). Very few bands composed their own original songs but when they did, they tried to write them in English and were not received very well by the audience. To Iranian audiences at the time, rock music was considered an exotic, loud, and rhythmic guitar-based music with English lyrics that was accompanied with a special form of fast dance (Nabavi 2013: 8-9). Aldoush Alpanian explains Iranian musician’s motivations to closely copy the international sounds of rock in order to please their fans in Iran:

People heard the music on the radio and television, they loved it the way it was and they just wanted to hear the exact thing. We wanted to please the audience so we played the music they had paid to listen to. We were more concerned about playing the songs exactly as the original ones than about creating new songs because that was not what the audience wanted to hear (Aldoush Alpanian, pers. comm.).

As more and more rock bands were formed, a live music scene emerged in which certain clubs and hotels featured the music. The German club, a club in uptown

Tehran directed by two young Iranian-German boys, was exclusively given to rock bands (Aldoush Alpanian pers. comm.). Other venues for rock music included Ghoo

Motel, Koochini night club, Ghasre Shirin night club and Central Bank (Bank-e Melli) club (Figure 2-1). Later, as rock music began attracted more people, much bigger concerts and rock festivals for larger audiences were held in stadiums and parks. One such as rock festival was held in Amjadieh stadium in 1966. Another was held in

Mohammad Reza Shah Concert Hall in 1967, and in Manzarieh garden in 1974 (Figure

2-2)(Nabavi 2013: 187). These venues were distinct from the Laleh Zar cabarets in which pop stars performed and catered to different clientele. Cabarets suited the lower middle class, while clubs were more luxurious and designed in a Western and modern way that attracted members of upper classes, businessmen, and foreigners who resided

in Iran for business or political purposes. Clubs were in uptown and wealthier parts of large urban areas including Tehran and were consequently more expensive than Laleh

Zar cabarets. They had more spacious stages that accommodated larger bands with drums sets while cabarets and bars allocated to Persian music shows had stages big enough for few instrumentalists and the singer. Besides, cabarets were places to eat, sit, and enjoy the performance while clubs were places to dance and had designated dance floors. Also, the costumers of cabarets were mainly males whereas the clubs which were attended by both genders. Such places for live music were closely related to the social class and age group, just in the same way as the music was.

Iranian rock music flourished and the musicians became sufficiently competent on their instruments that some were invited to other countries to perform (Barham Amin

Salmasi in Scorpio 2010). Among many Iranian rock bands of the 1960s and 1970s, the

Black Cats, Scorpio, The Hippies, Oujubeha (The Genius), The Sinners, and The

Rebels stand out because of their outstanding performances, famous band members, and of course the way they presented themselves including their hair styles and taste of fashion. The Sinners, for instance, wore jail clothes in their performances (Figure 2-3).

The Hippies, who later changed their name to Fireball in the early 1970s, had long hair and wore beads and other accessories that were uncommon among pop stars of the day (Figure 2-4). Clearly, the choice of clothing and the presentational style of the rock bands linked them directly with the youth counter culture emanating from England and the United States of the time.

I had very long hair and wore beads as hippies did. My name was also uncommon and after some time I was known as “Mr. Ali from the Beatles” among our fans (Aldoush Alpanian, pers. comm.).

Pre-Revolutionary Influential Rock Bands and Musicians

A short introduction on some of the most influential early rock bands and musicians and a brief discussion of their remarkable songs sheds additional light on socio-cultural position of early rock in Iran’s society of late 1960s and early 1970s. Many contemporary underground musicians in Iran were students of early rock musicians who stayed inside the country such as Fereydoon Furughi and Kourosh Yaghmaie or have listened to and learned from early Persian rock songs that were produced before the

Islamic Revolution.10 Thus, learning about the development of early rock leads to a better understanding of URM and its progress after the revolution. Furthermore, each band and musician had their own musical and extra-musical characteristics and brought their own versions of Westernized music to the country which later developed into URM and impacted the future generation of musicians in 1990s in various ways. The following discussion explores the development of Persian rock before the Islamic Revolution of

1979 and will set the foundation for the discussion of URM in following Chapters.

Black Cats

Black Cats was perhaps the most significant rock band before the Islamic

Revolution in Iran. The band, formed by brothers Shahbal and Shahram Shabpareh in

1963, later recruited Farhad Mehrad, Ebi, Afshin, Andranick Asaturian, Hassan

Shamayee Zadeh, and Naser Cheshm Azar who were among the most influential musicians and composers of Persian popular music (Shahbal Shabpareh in Rock On;

Nabavi 2013: 193). After the revolution, the Shabpareh brothers moved to the United

10 “Davoud Ajir and I went back to Iran in mid 1990s and started teaching in Iran’s music conservatory. We taught guitar and bass guitar and had many private students who were eager to learn the forms, harmonies and melodies of blues, soul and rock” (Aldoush Alpanian, pers. comm.).

States and Black Cats continued but switched to a dance oriented style of Persian popular music. The Black Cats has included 43 different musicians since its formation but only Shahbal Shabpareh has remained an active member since the beginning

(Nabavi 2013: 193). One of the reasons for Black Cats’ eminent position in Iran’s rock music scene has been the membership of such prominent musicians.

With its first band members, Shahram, Shahbal, Farhad, and Afshin, the Black

Cats performed in the Koochini Club in the early 1960s where they only covered the

Beatles’ and Rolling Stones’ songs but did not create and perform original music. Black

Cats owes much its early fame to Farhad Mehrad’s powerful vocal techniques, his unique voice, and his piano and guitar skills. Farhad, the Black Cats’ main vocalist, sang the Beatles’ songs so perfectly that some Iranian musicians believe his covers are actually better than the Beatles’ original songs. Among the many songs he covered, “Let

It Be” and “Yesterday” have become exceptionally popular in Iran whose recordings were published by Farhad’s family posthumously in 2009 (Farhad Mehrad Official

Website 2012).11

Although Shahbal Shabpareh was among the first generation of Iranians to form a rock band and become successful in pre-revolutionary Iran’s music scene, his self- identification as the “Pop Father of Persia” later in his career was not met with approval among audiences and other musicians. In early 2000s, the Black Cats released a new album titled “Pop Father of Persia” in the United States. The lyrics to the title track addressed the history of Persian music before Shahbal formed Black Cats and after that

11 Unfortunately, I found no reference on the original recordings that were published in the ‘70s in Iran. Their live and recorded performances, however, are accessible on the YouTube (Farhad Mehrad 2011; 2012).

and how, as they claim, he revolutionized Iran’s music scene (Black Cats 2003) (Table

2-1).

The main verse of the song states “We had everything, all kinds of music. All musicians were very talented. But what a pity we did not have Rock and Roll.” The chorus continues “He is the cat of Asia, Pop Father of Persia.” “Pop Father of Persia.”

Written by Shahbal Shabpareh, the song was an attempt to bring the Black Cats back to its golden days of pre-revolution Iran. However, it did not receive much appreciation from the group’s fans and contrary to what the band expected, this song lowered the band’s position among other rock bands. Soon after the Islamic revolution, Shabpareh brothers, among many other musicians, immigrated to the United States since they could not continue their musical career under an Islamic government.12 Today, the band is still working in Los Angeles, but is not perceived as a rock band anymore.

The Rebels

Band members in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s played in two or even more bands simultaneously or left their bands to join others every once in a while because there were not many youngsters who played rock music in Tehran. Shahram Shabpareh was among the most sought after musicians because he was a competent drummer, electric and bass guitar player as well as a keyboardist and a vocalist.13 Having been a member of Black Cats, he was already very well-known among rock fans in Iran when he formed

12 Farzaneh Hemmasi has carried out extensive research on Iran’s exile and diasporic music produced in Los Angeles. In her PhD dissertation, Hemmasi provides a comprehensive study of the history and reason for the majority of Iranian pop stars moving to the United States soon after the revolution of 1979 (Hemmasi 2010).

13 Shahram is still an active singer of Persian popular music. After he moved to the United States he started playing and singing his own distinctive style of Persian dance music and did not produce any rock music.

The Rebels in 1967 with musician that included Ebrahim Hamedi, Siavash Ghomeishi,

Kambiz Moeinee, Homayoon Jalali, Edi, and Farjad (Nabavi 2013:198).14 The Rebels emulated the sound of the Beatles, the Doors and the Rolling Stones. They not only covered songs as precisely as they could, but also imitated the way Western rock bands named and identified themselves. According to Ebrahim Nabavi, they chose the name

“Rebels” to show their rebellion against Persian traditional music (ibid.: 199). Their music was considered rebellious because it was loud and rhythmically different from

Persian dance and traditional music. However, they did not write or performs songs in which the lyrics voiced opposition to Persian traditions. They mainly covered Rolling

Stones’ songs and other hits of the time and produced only a few original albums that are now extremely rare and hard to obtain.

Not much music of early rock in Iran was documented and saved, but some musicians such as Farhad have recorded and distributed their music so widely that it can still be found today. Only a few original hits, such as those of Farhad, have been saved, while much of the music of other cover bands has not survived. No matter how insignificant their original songs may have been, The Rebels enjoyed great fame in the late 1960s by performing in famous nightclubs in Tehran such as Nepton club and Ghoo

Motel and at concert halls for large crowds of people. As Siavash Ghomeishi has put it,

“Once we performed for 7000 people in Mohammad Reza Shah concert hall in Tehran”

(quoted in Nabavi 2013: 200).

14 Ebrahim Hamedi, known as Ebi, is one of the most significant and globally-renowned singers of Persian popular music. Siavash Ghomeishi is also a famous singer and composer who has written some of the most prominent Persian popular hits.

Scorpio

In addition to The Rebels and Black Cats that achieved great success and fame toward the end of 1960s, the group Scorpio also played a key role in the formation and growth of rock music in Iran. Scorpio, as was mentioned earlier in this Chapter, consisted of Einollah Keyvan Shokouh on drums, Bahram Amin Salmasi on guitarist and vocals, and Bahram Saeedi on guitar and bass guitar. Before forming Scorpio, these musicians had played in different bands in Iran in the 1960s. Therefore, when they formed Scorpio in late 1960s, they were already well recognized musicians. Later,

Andranick Asaturian, pianist, and Erick Arconte, percussionist and drummer, joined the band as well.15

Scorpio primarily covered hits from famous international rock bands such as

Deep Purple, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Led Zeppelin, and James Taylor (Nabavi

2013: 163). They performed in clubs and restaurants, where urban Iranian youth went to dance to hit music of the time. Scorpio achieved huge success and fame in Tehran until

1971 when Bahram Saeedi left Iran for Italy to pursue higher education. Erick Arconte, the band’s drummer, also left the band. After a series of personnel changes the group eventually broke up in 1975. Bahram Saeedi believes that Scorpio was among the very few rock bands in Iran of the time that lasted as long as four years because they were all serious musicians who knew what they were pursuing in life (Scorpio 2010).

Farhad Mehrad

In addition to rock bands, there were also independent musicians who pursued solo musical careers. Farhad Mehrad from Black Cats and Kourosh Yaghmaie were

15 Erick Arconte was a French musician who travelled to Iran and stayed there until the Islamic revolution. He wrote songs for several bands and musicians and was a member of Scorpio for four years.

among the most important musicians of the time who later became recognized as influential figures of Iran’s rock music scene. Mehrdad, as was briefly discussed earlier, was a vocalist, pianist and guitar player. He was fluent in English and his authentic accent made his covered songs sound exactly like the original ones to Iranian audiences. Born in 1943 in Tehran, Mehrad started his musical career by learning the cello and later the guitar from his Armenian friends until he joined Black Cats in 1966

(Farhad Mehrad 2006).

After leaving Black Cats, Farhad developed an interest in film music and a began playing a soft form of pop-rock. He worked with well-respected Iranian lyricists and poets such as Ahmad Shamlou, Ardalan Sarfaraz, and Shahyar Ghanbari and composers such as Esfandyar Monfared Zadeh and Varujan. Some of his most important songs include “Marde Tanha” (The Lonely Man 1970) , “Jome’e” (Friday

1971) , “Koodakaneh” (The Childhood 1971), “Booye Eidi” (Smell of the New 1976),

“Gonjeshkak Ashimashi” (Ashimashi The Little Sparrow 1975), “Hafteh Khākestari”

(The Gray Week 1974), “Saghf” (The Roof 1977) and “Kooche Banafsheha” (Violas’

Immigration 1971). Much of the significance of these songs lies primarily in their lyrical content that mildly criticized the Iranian government of the day. “Gonjeshkake

Ashimashi,” for instance, criticizes the dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah through the metaphorical story of a little sparrow (Table 2-2).

The little sparrow in this song is a metaphor for common Iranians, members of the working-class. Similar to a working-class member, the sparrow in the song is vulnerable and weak. The singer’s warning for the sparrow not to sit on their roof is a warning for the laborers not to rely on the government because they will eventually be

exploited. In the end, the song asks some rhetorical questions to indicate the dictatorial nature of the Pahlavi monarchy in which people do all the work and the Shah reaps all the benefits from the labor.

“Marde Tanha” is a recent song of Farhad that gained importance in the political riots after the controversial election of Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad in 2009, some forty years after its initial release. The song describes a man, an ideal man, who is lonely, sorrowful and silent, but has remained strong. The description well matched Mir

Hossein Musavi, one of the two presidential candidates who lost to Ahmadi Nejad in

2009 and rebelled against the government and Khamenei claiming that election was fraudulent. Mir Hossein Musavi has been in house arrest since 2010 and has become

“Iran’s Oppositional Leader” along with Mehdi Karoubi, the other candidate (Radio

Farda 2010; Huffington Post 2011). “Marde Tanha” has become a musical embodiment of the riots and the role of Mir Hossein as the oppositions’ leader. The song is being shared on Facebook every year on his birthday and the anniversary of his house arrest.

Farhad’s position in Persian rock music is very controversial. To some people he is the pioneer of original and creative Persian rock, to others he is a just pop star (Rock

On 2012; Farhad Mehrad 2006). Some of the criticism Farhad has faced is as fierce as

meaning a vulgar, illiterate person, who was ,)لمپن( ”calling him a "Lompan misunderstood as an intellectual (Adib Vahdani quoted on Farhad Mehrad’s official website 2006).16

Most often there are people (musicians) who are unable to understand some obvious things or like Farhad move with the wind but show off as the

16 The adjective “Lompan,” probably coming from “Lumpen,” is the opposite of intellectual in Farsi. It is a very pejorative word to describe the kind of people who belong to the lower class, are uneducated, and at the same time represent themselves as “Intellectuals.”

intellectuals. They become very successful in Iran’s music. They might be very respectable. But, we need to make sure not to worship anybody like idols (Adib Vahdani quoted on Farhad Mehrad’s official website 2006).

Farhad was a pop and soul singer. He covered Ray Charles’s songs. It is true that he covered most of the Beatles’ and other rock bands’ songs, but he was not a rock musician (Aldoush Alpanian pers. comm.).

As the quote above makes clear, Farhad’s position as a rock star is controversial, but his role in creating a new genre of defiant music in Iran is undeniable. His songs, appealed to the youth because of their unique melodies, simple and sparse instrumentation, and of course, the realistic, emotional and critical lyrics that are different from those of typical Persian popular music. He was a pioneer among the

Iranian singers of creative, original, Persian-language songs that were unique musically and textually during a period that Iranian rock bands primarily covered Western hits.

One of the main reasons for categorizing him as a rock musician is his unique musical style that differed from the more typical Persian popular songs of musicians like

Googoosh, Sattar, and Ebi in the late 1960s. Furthermore, because of the significance of songs’ lyrical contents for Iranian audience, his meaningful and sometimes overtly critical songs’ texts gave him a significant position in Iran’s music scene that is incomparable to any other stars.17 He can be characterized as a pop-rock musician because of the innovative leading role that he assigned to the guitar in his songs, as well as the rebellious expression that is a characteristic of rock music. Despite the fact that his music was forbidden for 15 years after the revolution of 1979, his album

Sleeping While Awake was released in 1993 with the government’s official permit and became the best seller in the country. Large crowds attended his very few concerts in

17 Significance of lyrics and poetry in Iran’s culture and music will be discussed in Chapter 3.

Tehran in the early 1990s, before he went to France. Today, 12 years after his death, his music is still considered “the sound of the youth” when it comes to rebellious, meaningful music. Young Iranian generations consider his music expressive of their anger and opposition. Mana Neyestani’s latest cartoon of Farhad that was published in

September 2014 for the twelfth anniversary of Farhad’s death is indicative of his significant position among the youth in contemporary Iran (Figure 2-5).

Kourosh Yaghmaie

Another influential figure of Iran’s pre-revolutionary rock is Kourosh Yaghmaie, who has the controversial label “The Founder of Rock Music” in Iran.18 Ebrahim Nabavi considers Kourosh Yaghmaie as “The Most Influential” Iranian rock musician who brought rock music to Iran right when the Beatles and Rolling Stones rocked the stages in England (2013: 274). To Nabavi, Kourosh is different from all other rock musicians of his time because he was the first person able to transform the Western template of rock to a Persian rock song (ibid.: 278). Kourosh Yaghmaie considers himself one of the pioneers of rock music in Iran: “When I started to play rock music, no one knew what rock music was, except for very few people living in Tehran” (Kourosh Yaghmaie quoted in Nabavi 2013: 274).

Born in 1946 in Shahroud, a small town some 400 kilometers away from Tehran,

Kourosh Yaghmaie became a famous Iranian composer, vocalist, and accomplished electric guitarist. His musical life began at the age of five by learning Santour.19 Later

18 I tried unsuccessfully to contact Kourosh Yaghmaie.

19 Santur is the dulcimer of the Middle East, south-eastern Europe and South and East Asia which is used in Iran, Iraq, India, Turkey, Greece, Armenia, China and Tibet (Grove Online Santur). Carried horizontally and struck with two sticks, Santur is one of the main instruments in Persian traditional and art music along with Kamancheh and Tār.

when he was fifteen he took up his favorite instrument, the guitar. He formed and played with different rock bands but none of them lasted long. He was invited to other countries to perform because of his electric guitar playing competence, but he stayed in Iran and studied sociology at Beheshti University of Tehran (Known as the National University at the time)(Kourosh Yaghmaie 2013).

He wrote his first and most important song, “Gole Yakh” ( The Frozen Flower/

Chimonanthus), in 1974 (Korosh Yaghmayi 1974).20 “Gole Yakh” is known as “The First

Persian Rock Song” considering the key role of electric guitar in a Persian song for the first time, arrangement of instruments, melody and harmony of the song (Nabavi 2013:

273). His vocal style, characterized as soft and simple, unornamented and plain, with no vibrato as found in Persian popular and traditional music, also contributed to his categorization as a rock musician. His electric guitar playing and embellishing of the vocal melody revolutionized Iran’s rock music at a time when rock bands only covered western hits and musicians such as Farhad put heavy emphasis on piano and acoustic guitar (Example 2-1for the electric guitar’s melody line). For Iranian audiences, familiar with the timbres and role of electric guitar in Western rock, the same role and timbres were now being used in a Persian song for the very first time.

Furthermore, the song has a simple but a unique text addressing the sorrows and loneliness of a lover. Early in the 1970s, almost a decade before the Islamic

Revolution, Iran was struggling in the transition from tradition to modernity more than any other time during its history. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi had established himself as a

20 Gole Yakh has a dual meaning which can refer to both the Chimonanthus flower and the literal meaning “Frozen Flower.” Although both meanings are acceptable in the lyrics, I believe that by Gole Yakh Yaghmaie intended to emphasize on its frozen and lifeless aspect rather than the flower itself.

modern king and the increase in international oil prices had provided him with extra financial and political power in the region (Skocpol 1982: 270). Rapid urbanization and industrialization of the nation along with the influx of foreign workers into the country resulted in drastic changes in the society. Loneliness of human and depression resulting from changes that modernity brought along were among the most appalling consequences of machinery and industrialization. Iranians were influenced by this industrial revolution and sought a new kind of musical expression that was something more than the shallow dance music of pop stars. This is precisely what Farhad and

Kourosh addressed, and “Gole Yakh” is one of the greatest examples of a song addressing this loneliness and the human sorrows of modern society. It is a love song with a sad tone, musically and textually, but unlike typical Persian pop songs that address a lover’s sorrows, in “Goli Yakh” the singer never asks the beloved to come back. Rather, it presents a modern narrative expressing how the lover feels. The language of the song and the word-choice are simple (Table 2-3).

In addition to “Gole Yakh,” Kourosh wrote many other songs that can be classified as “Rock” based on their melodic and harmonic features as well as the role of the electric guitar, which was still absent in much of the Persian music of the time. “Dar

Entehā” (At the End), “Pāiez” (Autumn), “Khār” (Thorn) and “Key To Miāyee” (When Will

You Come) are among Kourosh’s songs that are very similar to works by the Beatles,

Rolling Stones, and The Doors in terms of arrangements, melodic lines, and vocal styles. “Khār” for instance, closely resembles The Doors’ hit “The End,” particularly the prelude. The keyboard has a key role in The Doors songs and the melody right at the beginning of “Khār” resembles The Doors’ songs clearly. The Drums’ rhythmic patterns

and the base line are also reflective of the influence Kourosh received from The Doors.

The visual aspect of the song also resembles the image of bands such as the Doors and the Beatles in their video clips. While most video clips of late 1960s in Iran were recorded in public television studios, this one shows the band members (guitarist, bassist, drummer and keyboardist) playing their instruments in an outdoor park. The visual, aural, and textual aspects of Kourosh’s songs were different from other Iranian musicians of his time and resembled those of international rock bands of the 1960s, and this led to his recognition as a rock musician.

Kourosh, however, did not confine himself to a specific genre. He created many songs which can be categorized as folk-rock and fusion. He was quite interested in

Iran’s folk music and included folk melodies, Persian poems, and local Farsi dialects in majority of his songs. “Reyhān”, “Leyla”, “Havār Havār”, “Shirin Joon” (Dear Shirin),

“Ghad Boland” (Tall) are among some of his famous songs that are based on folk tunes and other vernacular elements.

After the Islamic Revolution, Kourosh was silenced for 17 years until 1996 when he released his album Seeb-e Noghreyee (The Silver Apple 1996) with government’s permit. He was able to produce a few other albums as well, but his music got banned again in 2005 during the first year of Ahmadi Nejad’s presidency. During these years, he produced several albums with international record labels including Stones Throw and

Now Again. Eothen Alapatt, Stones Throw’s general manager between 2000 and 2011 named Kourosh Yaghmaie the “God Father of Iran’s Rock Music”; a very controversial label (Kourosh Yaghmaie 2013). Yaghmaie creates his music in Tehran now and has recently been allowed to officially release his music again. His performances in festivals

outside Iran and various interviews with important music magazines such as “Billboard” have made him “the representative” of Iran’s rock music in the West (Hundley 2011).

Controversies of “The Founder of Persian Rock” and “The God Father of Persian Rock”

Musicians such as Kourosh, Farhad Mehrad, and Shahbal Shabpareh have all played influential roles in the development of Persian rock and its transformation to

URM. However, their positions are shadowed by a variety of nicknames given to them.

As was previously mentioned, Shahbal considers himself the “Pop Father of Persia,” although many Iranian fans do not approve such a designation. Kourosh is also accredited with two labels “The Founder” and “God Father” of Persian rock. Although such labels do not impact URM and Persian rock directly, it is important to clarify the position of such musicians in Iran’s music history because each generation of musicians takes the previous generations as role models. These two labels have created a lot of debates in Iran’s rock music community and apparently, the study of Persian rock music’s history is not comprehensive without clarifying the position of Kourosh

Yaghmaie.

In the Rock On documentary directed and produced by Shahyar Kabiri, all interviewees are asked about their opinion on Kourosh’s two labels (2012). Musicians such as Saeed Karimi and Homayoon Majd Zadeh (founder and guitarist of metal band

Kahatmayan) believed that Kourosh is not “The Founder of Rock Music” in Iran because most of his music was created between 1970 and 1979, while early rock bands such as

The Hippies, Black Cats, and Scorpio played rock music in mid and late 1960s. Other musicians such as Kaveh Afagh believe that Yaghmaei was influential in the

development of Persian rock, but do not consider him as “The God Father” of Persian rock.

Conversely, there are other musicians such as Babak Farokhi (vocalist and lead guitarist of Azhirock metal band) who agree with Kourosh’ label as “The God Father” of

Persian rock music because of his avant-garde and forward-looking songs that resembled the songs of Western rock bands of his time (Rock On 2012). A few music critics and journalists such as Shadi Vatan Parast do not even consider Kourosh a rock musician saying that his music is more correctly alternative or fusion and lacks elements of rock music. Shadi Vatan Parast, author and secretary of Tehran Avenue Music

Festival, thinks it was only Kourosh’s guitar, simple melodies, and appearance that made people take him as a rocker.21 To her, Yaghmaie had no influence over rock music in Iran, not before or after the revolution (Nabavi 2013: 279). Arya Karnafi, music video director and former editor of Palapal music magazine, believes in Kourosh’s significant role in the development of Persian rock and his position as a pioneer.

However, he does not consider him an influential rock musician because he did not create revolutionary music but just a produced a Persian version of what was being produced in the West (ibid.: 283).

In his short autobiography accompanying his album “Back from the Brink” published by Stones Throw Records, Yaghmaie talks about his own fame as “The

Founder of Persian Rock Music” stating that he does not want to be called this because

Persian rock music is a problematic genre that requires future development to be considered as a real genre (quoted in Nabavi 2013: 272). In contrast, Ebrahim Nabavi

21 Tehran Avenue was an online music festival for underground music in the early 2000s (For more information see Bronwen Robertson 2012).

believes this label very well suits Yaghmaie because he was the first person who started creating music very similar to that of the Beatles and Rolling Stones with Persian lyrics and melodies when no one else was doing so (ibid.: 272).

Kourosh Yaghmaie’s influential role in Iran’s rock scene as a pioneer of creative

Persian rock song is undeniable, even if not all URM musicians agree on his influence and position. The most important reason for overlooking his place as a rocker in Iran’s music is due to his many folk and fusion songs that are rhythmic and lack elements of rock such as prominent electric guitar melodies. Regardless of the debates about his position in Iran’s rock history, he was among the first composers, songwriters and singers who were very well familiar with both the Western rock music of their time as well as Persian folk and traditional music. He was an innovative, progressive musician who knew how localize the universal template of rock music of his time.

Regardless of all the controversies around Shahbal Shabpare, Farhad Mehrad and Kourush Yaghmaie’s position in Iran’s rock scene, what seems to be undoubtedly true is that there is no single, prominent musician who can be named “The Founder of

Persian Rock.” Persian rock music was born in mid 1960s in big cities of Iran, mainly

Tehran, and was the offspring of several bands and musicians’ contributions. In addition to bands and musicians and their contributions to the development of Iran’s rock scene discussed in this Chapter, there were many other influential musicians including Martik,

Kamran Khashe, Freydoon Furughi, Artush, Aref Aref Kia, Mehrpouya, Jamshid Ali

Morad. Today’s Persian rock music is influenced by these bands and their musicians to certain degrees, and accrediting one musician with any of such labels is not possible, and of course, ethical.

Conclusion

To conclude the discussion on rock music’s emergence and development in pre- revolutionary Iran, several points that need to be made. First of all, it is important to understand who the audience of this music was and how they perceived and defined rock in Iran. The majority of consumers of rock of 1960s were the urban, upper class, mostly educated, wealthy youngsters who were very familiar with the Western rock music of the time. There were also Westerners who lived and worked inside Iran and attended live shows. These two groups were the target audience of early rock music in

Iran, not the mass population of the country. The mass, ordinary, middle and lower class people primarily consumed Persian popular, folk, and traditional music that was broadcast from public television and radio. The Western associations of rock music were not very well received in the more conservative and religious areas of Iranian society such as Mashhad or Qom. Furthermore, the French, English, Italian, or Russian texts of early Iranian rock were not understandable for most Iranians of the time. Thus, it was not only the aural aspect (fast rhythms, loud and distorted electric guitar and drums) that confined the audience to a certain group, but also the language of the songs, fashion, dance, and the performance locations that were appealing, and accessible to a cosmopolitan youth population. For the young Iranian generation of

1960s, rock music was understood as the sound of modernity and Westernization, even more modern and Western than the pop songs of Googoosh or Ebi. In a society in which Westernization had become a cultural value, the upper class, wealthy youth were the pioneers of absorbing it in a variety of ways from fashion to dance movements and lyrical contents.

Second, it is important to note that early rock music in Iran was to a great degree limited to covering the songs of famous Western rock bands. There are several reasons for simply covering the hit and not creating original songs. The main reason is that the audiences preferred exact copies of Western rock songs. According to the earlier quote from my conversation with Aldoush Alpanian, people loved to hear the Western hits exactly as they were recorded by the original bands. Iranian cosmopolitan youth listened to the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and Led Zeppelin via certain television and radio channels and records, and that was the kind of music they wanted to hear and dance to in their dance clubs. The original songs that were produced by a very few bands of the time did not achieve much commercial success and fame because they were not were not played on television and radio and sometimes were not even recorded. Live performances of original songs sounded unfamiliar and strange.

Therefore, rock bands preferred to cover the hits as well as they could so that they could perform, attract the audience, and get paid.

Another reason for not creating original songs is that early rock bands were not well equipped with the knowledge, experience, and expertise of producing their own songs. Rock music was a new musical idiom to them and they needed to experience and learn its intricacies. It took them years to gain an overall understanding of rock music’s governing rules, instrumentations, and lyrical contents and forms in order to create their original works. This became possible later in 1990s. Through the contributions and experiences of early rock bands that URM bands started producing original songs.

In this Chapter, emergence and development of Western music, in particular rock music, in Iran was discussed. Through exploring different musicians and bands’ musical and extra-musical characteristics and certain contributions, an overall image of Iran’s rock scene in late 1960s was portrayed. Having emerged as a consequence and product of modernization and westernization that swept Iran in 1960s, Iran’s early rock music aimed at imitating its western, mainly British and American, counterparts as closely as possible. Early Iranian rockers were imitators and laid the foundation for URM of the late 1990s.

Iran’s rock music’s evolution from covering other bands’ songs to creating

Persian rock songs using the Western template can be traced in the works of musicians such as Farhad and Kourosh Yaghmaie. Both Kourosh and Farhad began their career by covering other songs, but later developed their own style of Persian rock that had great influence on the future generation of rockers four decades later. The musical movement that reached its climax through creative songs of Kourosh and Farhad continued and give birth to a diverse musical scene in the future decades, but it was hindered by the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Farhad was the pioneer of critical and oppositional song lyrics with sparse instrumentations and easy melodies that highlighted the meanings of the texts. His fame and respected position as a singer of Iran’s avant- garde music of the 1960s among the youth is indicative of his significant contributions to

Persian rock music. Kourosh was “the electric guitar player” of Iran for years and it was through his efforts that electric guitar found a key role in Iran’s rock music. He taught at different music education institutions and trained numerous musicians who later gave birth to URM.

The English lyrics of early cover bands were replaced by Persian texts, which were understandable to larger Iranian audience, in the works of Farhad, Kourosh, and

Freydoon Furughi. Gradually people began to value the creativity of original songs and

Iran’s music market absorbed a new musical idiom that was characterized by meaningful, moving lyrics, and melodies, harmonies, and instrumentations that were different from Persian popular and traditional music. Hard-to-understand poetry of

Khayyam, Hafez and Rumi that was used for Persian traditional and folk music was replaced by simple yet expressive song lyrics of Persian rockers. Dance music gave its place to slower version of rock songs that had stories to tell. Consumers longed for a new musical idiom to which they could relate. Although Persian popular and dance music have always been appealing to a mass audience and consumers, it was Persian rock music that created the bridge between intellectual and mass consumers of popular music in late 1970s, right before the Islamic Revolution. In Chapter 3, Islamic revolution, its impacts on Iran’s music scene and emergence of URM will be discussed.

Table 2-1. “Pop Father of Persia,” Lyrics written by Shahbal Shabpare Verse 3 in English Verse 3 in Farsi موزیک سنتی داغه داغ بود ,Persian traditional music was the hot cake باب دل مردم کوچه باغ بود .The masses loved it more than anything else

تجویدی , یاحقی و بهاری ,Tajvidi, Yahaghi va Bahar تار شهناز , نی کسایی .Tāre Shahnaz, Neye Kasayee

کارشون کالسیک و عالی بود ,They were all classic and perfect حیف خالی بود Rock & Roll اما جای What a pity there was no Rock and Roll

He's the cat of Asia Pop Father of Persia He's the cat of Asia Pop Father of Persia

Table 2-2. “Gonjeshkak Ashimashi,” Lyrics written by Ahmad Shamloo and Hasan Hatami, Composed by Esfandyar Monfared Zadeh. Verse 3 in English Verse 3 in Farsi گنجشگک اشی مشی, لب بوم ما مشین Ashimashi the little sparrow, don’t sit on our rooftop بارون میاد خیس میشی, برف میاد گوله میشی It rains and you’ll get wet, it snows and you’ll become میفتی تو حوز نقاشی .a snowball and you’ll fall into the paint pool خیس میشی, گوله میشین You’ll get wet and fall into the pool of paint like a میفتی تو حوز نقاشی .snowball کی میگیره فراش باشی Who demands? The sheriff کی میکشه قصاب باشی Who slaughters? The butcher کی میپزه آشپزباشی Who cooks? The chef کی میخوره حکیم باشی Who eats? The king گنجشگک اشی مشی …Ashimashi the little sparrow

Table 2-3. “Gole Yakh” Lyrics by Mehdi Akhavan Langarudi, Composed by Kourosh Yaghmaie. Verse 3 in English Verse 3 in Farsi غم میون دو تا چشمون قشنگت ، لونه کرده ,Sorrow is settled in your beautiful eyes شب تو مو های سیاهت ، خونه کرده .Night lives in your black hair

دو تا چشمون سیاهت ، مثل غمهای منه ,Your black eyes are as dark as my nights سیاهی های دو چشمت ، مثل غمهای منه The blackness of your eyes is as dark as my melancholies.

وقتی بغض از مژه هام پایین میاد ، بارون میشه .And then, tears turn into rain سیل غمها آبادیم رو ویرونه کرده .Torrent of sorrow has wrecked my life

وقتی با من می مونی تنهایم رو ، باد میبره When you are with me, the wind takes away my solitude. دو تا چشمام بارون ، شبونه کرده My eyes are wet with night tears as they have rained throughout the night.

بهار از دستهای من پر زد و رفت Spring (of happiness and youth) has slipped through my fingers. گل یخ توی دلم جوونه کرده .The frozen flower has blossomed in my heart تو اتاقم دارم از تنهایی آتیش می گیرم .I am burning with loneliness in my room ای شکوفه توی این زمونه کرده .Loneliness has blossomed in this life

چی بخونم جوونیم رفت و صدام رفته دیگه How can I sing when I have lost my youth, and I have lost my voice? گل یخ توی دلم جوونه کرده .The frozen flower has blossomed in my heart

Example 2-1. Electric Guitar Melody from the Song “Gole Yakh.”

Figure 2-1. Black Cats performing in Ghasre Shirin Club in 1966. (Farhad Mehrad’s Official Website 2012).

Figure 2-2. Scorpio performing in rock festival in Manzarieh in 1974 (Nabavi 2013: 186). Photo from Ebrahim Nabavi’s old photo collection used with his approval.

Figure 2-3. The Sinners’ Performance in Amjadieh (Tehran) in 1966. Photo from Ebrahim Nabavi’s old photo collection used with his approval (Nabavi 2013: 155).

Figure 2-4. Fireball band in Tehran in 1970: L to R, Jahangir, Vahid, Bardia, Navid, Davood Ajir & Aldoush Alpanian. Photo credit goes to Aldoush Alpanian who gave me the photo for this research.

Figure 2-5. A cartoon by famous cartoonist, Mana Neyestani, published on Iran Wire.com and Mana Neyestani’s Facebook page in September 2014. Cartoon is used by Mana’s permission (Mana Neyestani Facebook Page 2014).

CHAPTER 3 MUSIC AFTER THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION

This Chapter is devoted to the study of social, cultural, and political transformations of Iranian society after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 that led to the emergence of URM as a youth music in the late 1990s and its subsequent development. I explore the impact and role of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic

Guidance on Iran’s music scene and discuss how this new ministry controlled the music market by issuing permits for music production, distribution, and performance. After discussing the role of President Mohammad Khatami and his liberal reformist government in opening up the space for the birth and development of Iran’s underground music in the 1990s, I dig into the definition and socio-cultural associations of “rock” and “underground,” as two building blocks of URM, in the context of modern- day Iran. I introduce the musical scene and its creators and aim at shedding light on who the musicians are, what their values and concerns are, and how their music is reflective of their surroundings.

Islamic Revolution and Music

The sudden Islamic Revolution of 1979 is a major turning point in Iran’s modern history. Between 1977 to 1979 urban workers and people from the newly emerging middle class revolted against the culturally pro-Western dominant class that consisted of state bureaucrats and foreign and domestic capitalists and investors (Skocpol 1982:

265). There are extensive studies on the factors that enraged people and the process of

“social revolution” which was later identified as an “Islamic,” “ideological” revolution

(Arjomand 1988; Dabashi 1993; Kurzman 2009). Thus, instead of discussing how the

revolution took place, I focus on how the Islamic revolution impacted different aspects of social and cultural domains, particularly the music scene.

The Pahlavi monarchy had certain characteristics among which its heavy emphasis on modernizing and westernizing the country stand out as the most significant. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s regime was an “absolutist-monarchial military dictatorship” as Skocpol put it (1982: 265). The working class was aggravated by the high unemployment and rapid industrialization that resulted in a financial crisis inside the country. However, people’s discontentment was not limited to those economic issues. People were outraged by the Shah’s “counterfeit” version of modernization and its “Westoxification” with everything Western that brought along pop culture and

)شیعه( ”westernized lifestyle.1 Although Pahlavi government was an Islamic, “Shi’a regime, images of barely dressed women in the cinema, mini-skirt wearing pop stars on public television, an increase in the number of nightclubs, casinos and bars resulted from the influx of Westerners in the country and enraged the Muslim mass.2 In the light of people’s dissatisfactions, an Islamic revolution took place under the direction of

Ayatollah Khomeini, a Shi’a cleric who later became the Supreme Leader of Islamic

Republic of Iran for nearly ten years (3 December 1979 – 3 June 1989).

1 “Westoxification” is a term coined by Iranian author and intellectual, Jalal Al-Ahmad, in a book with the same title. Al-Ahmad severely criticized Pahlavi monarchy, and Iranian intellectuals of the time, for blindly imitating the West and not developing the infra-structures of the country that are needed to construct the foundation for such rapid westernization (Al-Aḥmad 1982).

2 The Shi‘a and Sunni schools of thought are the two major branches of Islam. Iran is a dominantly Shi’a country and Sunnis are considered, and treated, as a minority. Baluchis and Kurds are major Sunni communities in Iran.

Socio-Cultural Impacts of the Islamic Revolution

With the empowerment of Mullahs (Muslim Clerics), Islamic ideologies served as the basis for the new constitution. All traces of monarchy were removed from the government and society and Islamic rules were imposed as the governing power. As discussed in Chapter 2, the first decade after the revolution (1980s) was culturally, socially, politically, and economically unstable. Khomeini was mainly concerned with

Islamicizing the country and eliminating all Western elements. He took drastic measures for transforming a country in the middle of transition to westernization back to its religious roots. What is known as the Cultural Revolution was one of the main embodiments of these transformations. Universities and educational institutes were temporarily closed, so were the bars, clubs, casinos, and cabarets.

The film and music industry went through drastic changes as well. All types of musical activities including concerts, live shows, and music broadcast on radio and television, and music education were banned. New regulations based on Islamic rules forced women to wear hijab and female solo singing in public was forbidden; women were only permitted to sing solo for female audience (Rastovac 2010: 65).

Despite the fact that there is no explicit denouncement of music in the Quran, music has long held a problematic position within Islam. It is considered as seductive and corruptive by many Ayatollahs and Muslim clerics including Ayatollahs Safi

Golpayegani, Tabrizi, Khomeini, and Khamenei (Sedaghat 2014). Khomeini believed that music has a corruptive nature which plagues the country, especially the youth, and distracts people from Islam:

Music is like a drug, whoever acquires the habit can no longer devote himself to important activities. It changes people to the point of yielding people to vice or to preoccupations pertaining to the world of music alone.

We must eliminate music because it means betraying our country and our youth. We must completely eliminate it ( Khomeini quoted in Youssefzadeh 2000: 38).

Some Ayatollahs, however, do not believe that all types of music are “haram”

(evil) and should be banned. Clerics such as Ayatollahs Fazel Lankarani, Behjat, and

Sistani believe that music is not haram unless it is “Tarab Music” which is dance music made for mixed gatherings of female and males (Sedaghat 2014). “Tarab” here is different from the more common Tarab genre of Arabic music. In the Arabic word

means excitement and happiness as well as anything that causes such )طرب( ”Tarab“ excitement and extreme joy (Meaning of Tarab 2014).3 A musician who plays such

a term that has a pejorative connotation. Thus, folklore ,)مطرب( ”music is called “Mutrib and Persian tradition music are not banned because they are not considered as such; although their position was also ambiguous in the early years after the revolution.

As a result of such obscurities, controlling music became one of the major problems that the new government faced after the revolution. Pop music was

or vulgar and corrupting and it was completely removed )مبتذل( ”considered as “Mubtazal from the society (Rastovac 2010: 65). Consequently, musicians, particularly pop stars and female singers, were either silenced or forced to leave the country. Many popular musicians such as Iran’s most famous female singer, Googoosh, as well as Farhad

Mehrad, Fereydoon Furughi, and Kourosh Yaghmaie refused to immigrate to other countries hoping that the situation would change. 4 However, the majority of pop stars, composers, and music-related business people immigrated to Los Angeles and

3 A.J. Racy is among the prominent scholars of Arab music who have written extensively on Tarab (Racy 2004).

4 Googoosh stayed in Iran for 20 years but eventually moved to Canada in 2000 (Gorgin 2000).

established a new type of Persian popular music in the diaspora known as “Los

Angelesi” music. Furthermore, importing the records and musical equipment was banned for a decade and the smuggled records and instruments were traded in the black market (ibid.).

Silencing and sending the musicians to exile was one of the new government’s actions to achieve control over music. Its major action, however, was the establishment

also known as ,)وزارت فرهنگ و ارشاد اسالمی( of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance

“Ershād” in the early years after the revolution (Youssefzadeh 2000: 42).5

Ethnomusicologist Ameneh Youssefzadeh has done extensive research on the role and responsibilities of Ershād in her article entitled “The Situation of Music in Iran Since the

Revolution: The Role of Official Organizations” (ibid.). According to her, Ershād’s three main functions with regard to music and musicians include: 1. Protection and Support,

2. Guidance and Orientation, 3. Supervision and Control. For this study, I mainly deal with the third area which is itself inclusive of (a) tight control of recorded music, (b) permits for music teaching, and (c) organization of musical events (ibid.).

As a result of Ershād’s three main areas of responsibilities regarding musical

in )مجوز( ”,activities, the government created an official permit, known as “Mojavvez order to authorize or to ban musical activities. Thus, no musical event of any kind can be held without having secured the official Mojavvez, permit, from Ershād. Besides, no music can be recorded and distributed without Mojavvez. Music recordings, musical

5 This ministry was established by integration of two ministries: “Culture and Art” and “Science and Higher Education.” Ministry’s website does not provide an exact year of establishment and only explains how this ministry was shaped and developed since before the revolution (Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance 2014).

)مجاز( ”,events, and music education institutions that obtain the permits are called “Mojāz

.)غیر مجاز( ”,and those without official permit are called “Gheire Mojāz

The procedure of issuing the permits for concerts and music production and distribution has two main parts. First, Ershād categorizes different kinds of music based on their genre. According to Youssefzadeh (ibid.), their list is as follows:

(Sonnati (Traditional )س( S (Navāhi (Regional )ن(  N (Āmuzeshi (Educational )آ(  A Taghyir Karde (Modified)6 )ت( T (Jadid (New )ج(  J (Mellal (Nations: World Music )م(  M (Kelāsik-e Gharb (Western Classical Music )ک(  K Pop )پ(  P Then, based on the quality of music, it is given a number from 1 to 4. The criteria for quantifying the quality of music are not clear. As Youssefzadeh mentions, the quality of recordings and presentations is assessed by a council known as the Council of

.(.ibid) ”)شورای کارشناسی موسیقی( Evaluation of Music or “Shorā-ye Kārshenāsi-ye Musiqi

There is no information on who the current or previous council members are and how they have been selected on Ershād’s website, but according to Youssefzadeh, the council members at the time of her fieldwork included professional musicians such as

Davud Ganje, Abdol Majid Kiani, Razavi Sarvestani, and Kambiz Roshanravan.

In addition to the Council of Evaluation of Music, there is the Council for

They require all ”.)شورای مجوز شعر( Authorization of Poems or “Shorā-ye Mojavvez She’r songwriters to submit their lyrics to this council to be reviewed before recording,

6 Modified or Taghyir Karde is a label given to a kind of music which used to belong to a different category. Youssefzadeh’s example for this category is one cassette by Alizadeh who is both a follower and innovator of Persian traditional music (2000: 45). It is a very ambiguous label, but it has given more freedom to the council members to label musics that do not conform to characteristics of any other genres.

publication, and performance. If the lyrics are in languages other than Persian, such as

Turkish or Kurdish, translated versions must be also be submitted. Youssefzadeh explains that a council member told her that poems must be devoid of socially, culturally, and religiously- offensive words or messages. The council avoids issuing permits to vulgar and common (Mubtazal) lyrics as well as those considered as depressing (Nā Omid Konandé). Such lyrical contents are asked to be revised or changed thoroughly before performance or publication (ibid.: 46-47).

The council members do not admit this, but their major concern is, of course, texts that voice oppositional positions to the government and Islam.7 This council’s responsibility is much more important than the council of music. In fact, most of the permits for music are rejected or delayed because of the lyrical contents of the music.

As Bronwen Robertson has closely observed, poetry is one of the major art forms in

Iran. Poets such as Hafiz, Saa’di, Ferdowsi, Rudaki, Attar, Rumi, and Khayyam are highly respected among Iranians and their poetry is the most valuable art form in the society. A Hafiz poetry collection, known as Hafiz Divan, is as esteemed as holy Quran in Iranian households (Robertson 2012: 18-21). A variety of socio-cultural and socio- political issues are delivered through Persian poetry. For instance, poems of Hafiz,

Sa’di, and Rumi are filled with social, cultural and moral lessons, and poems of Nima

Youshij, Ahmad Shamloo, Aref Qazvini are full of political and socio-cultural criticisms.

The government, being aware of the significance of poetry in Iranian culture, maintains close control over the poetry and lyrics used in music.

7 Numerous musicians talked about their music’s permit being rejected because of their lyrical contents (The Ways Interview 2011)

The process of obtaining a permit for music production and performance is very ambiguous. Absence of clear criteria for assessing the quality of music and its lyrical content has had major implications on Iran’s music scene. This ambiguity has provided both councils with the power to reject the issuing of a permit without giving specific reasons. Sometimes musicians are given very broad and vague reasons such as overall low quality, improper instrumentation, poor vocal techniques, or lack of innovation. Such subjectivity of approach has led to a chaotic situation which is only beneficial to the authorities. As one musician anonymously informed me,

I was asked to go to Ershād to meet with the members about my music a few times. At first they said electric guitar is highly distorted and the drums are very loud and aggressive. Later they said the lyrics can be interpreted as political, and finally they said the overall quality is very low and permit cannot be issued. They do not explain what they expect from the music and they do not clarify on what basis they judge the musical aesthetics. It is all subjective and open to interpretation. You can never understand what they expect from your music” (pers. comm.).8

Besides, the situation is more chaotic when it comes to live performances. There have been numerous instances in which permitted live performances were cancelled in different cities for various reasons (BoorsNews 2012). Sometimes the police may cancel a show shortly before the performance, and sometimes, voluntary forces such as “Basij” and “Ansār Hezbollāh” interrupt performances.9 They might be enraged by the music itself, in case of rock and dance music, and/or by the presence of mixed men and women in the audience. Thus, there is no guarantee that a concert, even with a secured permit, will be allowed to take place.

8 There are quotes from different musicians who preferred to be left “anonymous” to be on the safe side.

9 Basij and Ansãr Hezbollãh are voluntary forces of young males and female who believe in "Enjoining as one of the ”,)امر به معروف و نهی از منکر( good and forbidding wrong," or “Amr be Maruf va Nahy Az Monkar major doctrines of Islam. They believe Quran has given them the authority, and expects them, to teach the good deeds and hinder the wrong actions.

Furthermore, due to the fact that Ershād is under the direct control of the government and knowing that there are no clear criteria for the assessment of music and lyrics, the process and criteria of issuing permits change with every new president and minister. Accordingly, a musician might be given the permit during the presidency of one president and then be denied in another president’s government. In fact, the president’s role in the cultural domain, particularly in relation to music, cinema, and printed matter is very crucial because Ershād’s regulations are not part of the constitution and are, thus, very capricious according the wishes of the ruling regime.

Besides, Ayatollahs can change their views on music freely because there are no specific Islamic rules about music in Quran. They alter their fatwas10 with the changes in the society and social and political movements inside the country just in the same way as Khomeini did shortly before his death. Khomeini had issued a fatwa in the early years after the revolution and banned musical instruments trading, but in late 1980s he issued another fatwa and lifted the ban on the condition that instruments serve a licit purpose (Rastovac 2010: 66).

Consequently, the use and position of music in the Islamic society of Iran has gone through several cycles since 1979. After almost a decade of the absolute prohibition of musical performances, production and education, in the late 1980s Iran experienced a relaxation of some regulations in the cultural arena.11 As Youssefzadeh and Rastovac point out, music education, still limited to Persian traditional music, was

determining the licit or non-licit (مرجع تقلید ,’A fatwa is an Islamic law issued by certain Ayatollahs (Marja 10 character of an act.

11 Persian traditional music was permitted but only on specific occasions and under certain circumstances. The concerts were closely monitored by the authorities, and any music that could be accompanied by body movements was immediately removed from the programs.

permitted (2000; Rastovac 2010: 66). Some music schools and private institutions appeared in large cities and people found a chance to take their instruments out of their homes. Certain live performances of Persian traditional music were also permitted. The revolution and establishment of Ershād led to emergence of four different styles of

Persian music: Authorized music (Musiqi-é Mojāz), Unauthorized Music (Musiqi-é

Ghiere Mojāz), Los Angeles Style Music (Musiqi-e Los Angelesi), and

Independent/Alternative music created by Persian musician all around the world

(Musiqi-e Mostaghel). The situation of music inside the country, however, did not change much until 1997 with the presidential election of Mohammad Khatami.

Mohammad Khatami: Socio-Cultural Reformation and Relaxation of Regulations

The presidential election of Mohammad Khatami was one of the most important events in Iran’s history. On May 23, 1997, Seyyed Mohammad Khatami was elected as the fifth president of Iran with more than 20 million of the total of 28 million votes

(Khatami 2005). This presidential election is significant in a variety of aspects. First, it has the record of the largest number of voters since Iranian Islamic Republic

Referendum in March 1979 (Bakhash 1998: 80). Second, the ballots were accurately counted and the results were truthfully announced as opposed to what happened in presidential election of Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad in 2009 (ibid.). Third, a majority of pro

Khatami voters were women, young people, and members of the middle class (ibid.).

The youth, who were discontented with the oppressions and longed for a freer country, were his main supporters, not only in his first election but also in his second election four years later.

As a reformist, Khatami promised to change the country in various domains, including the cultural arena. His presidential years are characterized by an expansion of

social freedom, a relaxation of regulations in the cultural and political domain, and the increase of international respect for the country through his democratic ideas and actions. Introducing the idea of “Dialogue among Civilizations” as a response to Samuel

P. Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" theory in his speech in the United Nation in

September 2000, Khatami aimed at improving Iran’s position in world politics (Dialogue among Civilizations 2000). Accordingly, the United Nations announced the year 2001 as the “United Nations' Year of Dialogue among Civilizations” (Dialogue among

was a "زنده باد مخالف من" ”,Civilizations 2005). Khatami’s motto “Long Live My Opponent major change in Iran’s hostile political situation after the Iran-Iraq war and with all the conflicts between Iran’s two main political parties: Reformists and Conservatives.

In the cultural domain, Khatami aimed at relaxing regulations by appointing

Ataollah Mohajerani as the Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance from 1997 to 2000

(Dr. Seyyed Ataollah Mohajerani 2005). An author with graduate degrees in history and culture, a literary enthusiast, translator, and chief editor of several newspapers,

Mohajerani served his position with knowledge and experience for three years

(Mohajerani 2009).12 During his appointment, Mohajerani’s more liberal attitudes toward literary publications, cinema and music provided an environment in Iran for the arts to flourish. As a result, Iranian cinema witnessed freedom incomparable to its previous and following years. Also, formerly banned books, magazines, and newspapers started to be published again (Rastovac 2010: 67).

However, the most remarkable changes appeared in the musical domain.

Restrictions over popular music were lifted for the first time after the Islamic revolution.

12 He later resigned in 2000.

Live performances at the universities and in concert halls were granted. The process of securing the official permit for music recording and distribution became easier, and more and more music schools appeared all around the country. Previously, music broadcast on national radio and television was limited to Persian traditional and a few types of folk music but now, public television and radio started to broadcast popular music. Nonetheless, it is important to point out that certain musical styles such as dance music, fast beat music, and female solo singings were still banned.

In light of more freedom in Iran’s music scene and with easier procedures of issuing permits for musical activities, a new genre of popular music appeared in Iran.

The category of authorized popular music, musiqi-é pop mojāz, had to have specific characteristics: male vocalists, sparse instrumentations with emphasis on piano and violin, avoidance of the use of fast and dance beats and closely supervised lyrical contents. Laudan Nooshin names this music “New Pop,” but it is also known as “Pop-e

Seda o Simayee” among Iranians considering the fact that this music is mainly broadcast on Seda o Sima , Iran’s national television and radio.and must conform to all

Islamic rules.

Some of the first generation of musicians of authorized pop included Khashayar

Etemadi, Alireza Assar, and Mohammad Esfehani. Nooshin sees several commonalities between this new pop and Los Angelesi pop that developed in the diaspora including vocal techniques and main melodic lines (2004: 247). In fact, some new pop singers imitated the vocal style of Los Angelesi singers so closely that their distinction was not easy to make at first. Khashayar Etemadi and Qassem Afshar are among the most prominent examples of such singers. Etemadi imitated Dariush Eghbali’s vocal style

because of his voices timbre resembling that of Dariush. Afshar copies Ebi and has even covered some of Ebi’s famous songs such as “Khalije Fars” or “The Persian Gulf.”

Nooshin claims that the emergence of new pop and musicians such as Afshar and

Etemadi reflected the government’s attempt to create a counter-subversive musical movement inside the country in order to provide people with a copy of what entered the country through the black market. In other words, the authorities permitted and supported this music in hopes that the music market could be controlled and, of course, to reap financial benefits from them (ibid.: 250-253).

The new pop, however, did not achieve as much success and fame as its Los

Angeles-based counterpart for several reasons. First, female singers were still absent.

Second, it was not dance music and could not replace Andi Madadian or Shohreh Solati or Shahram Shabpareh dance songs in parties.13 Third, their music was largely restricted to the sound alone. It did not have any cultural or social associations such as fashion or dance style in the same way that western or Persian pop did and, importantly, did not involve music videos. Fourth, the song texts were devoid of controversial issues such as open expression of love for the opposite sex, or the expression of dissatisfaction about any social or cultural issues. The texts were basically about love of God and Islamic figures, motherly love, nationalistic themes and expression of love and respect for the government, the Supreme Leader, and the martyrs, or descriptions of beauty of nature. Etemadi’s songs, for instance, were easily distinguishable from Daruish’s songs in regard to their lyrical contents. Therefore, new pop was not successful in replacing Los Angelesi or even in replacing pre-revolutionary

13 Andy, Shohreh, and Shahram Shabpareh are famous pop stars residing and working in Los Angeles.

pop, but it did open the way for other musicians who emerged a few years later and revolutionized Iran’s pop music.

In the following years during Khatami’s presidency, several influential musicians appeared among which Shadmehr Aghili is most remarkable. Shadmehr is a violist, guitarist, pianist, composer, arranger, and vocalist whose music was very well received by the youth in Iran. His major permitted albums include Mosāfer (The Traveler) and

Dahāti (The Villager) both released in 1998 and achieved great success (Shadmehr

Aghili 2014). His image as a young man in short sleeved tee shirt with a clean-shaven face was a shocking image that contrasted starkly with the bearded suit-wearing singers of his time (Figure 3-1). Prominence of Shadmehr Aghili in new authorized pop lies in three main aspects. First, he was a representative of the youth in new pop while the majority of authorized pop singers in Iran were men in their late 30s. Shadmehr was in his early twenties when he released his first album Bahāre man (My Spring) in 1997

(Shadmehr 2014). Furthermore, the lyrical contents of his songs were mainly romantic and more importantly, his music was different from both pre-revolutionary and Los

Angelesi pop in its melodies, arrangements, and use of rhythms. His music was more modern than both pre-revolutionary and Los Angelesi pop. It could be interpreted as dance music, although it was not explicitly written for that purpose. His music was also not a fake version or mere copy of other pop stars. He composed and arranged his own songs, as opposed to other pop stars who are typically only vocalists. He belonged to the younger generation and could express his emotions through his music so that the youth would relate to it. Later he immigrated to Canada when the government refused to issue permits for his music:

None of his songs were permitted to be played on public media (i.e. TV). Shadmehr worked hard to get permission for his Adam o Hava (Adam & Eve), an album that was supposed to be released in 2001. However, not only he did not, but also, he was banned to work as a singer, musician, or to appear on TV shows. Having left with no better choice, he decided to leave Iran in 2002, in order to continue his music in Canada, away from any restrictions (Shadmehr 2014).

In addition to progressive singers and musicians such as Shadmehr Aghili, several pop bands emerged in Iran in the 1990s, for the first time after the revolution.

The Arian band and Sun Boys are among the most famous bands active in the category of authorized pop music. Arian band played a key role in transforming Iran’s music scene after the revolution. In fact, it was the first band with female musicians after the revolution: three members of Arian’s nine members are women who play the guitar and sing backing vocals. For the first time, musicians were photographed playing their guitars; both males and females. Moreover, female members of the band created a new style for wearing scarfs that was followed by their fans and added another aspect to their music in the society. Arian revolutionized many aspects of Iran’s pop music, not only in the aural aspect but also in creating a specific style of fashion and presenting their band in concerts and album covers (Figure 3-2). Their permitted English songs opened up space for creating a dialogue between Iranian youth and the youth around the world, an attempt that was later made by URM creators.

Khatami’s presidency, which was characterized by its cultural, social, and political reforms, played an influential role in transforming the situation of music in Iran.

During his eight years in the office, many bands and musicians emerged in Iran because of the availability of music education, increased accessibility of musical instruments and equipment, and more freedom for musical activities. Securing permits enabled many potential musicians to record and distribute their music and officially

enter the music market. Additionally, the general society’s tolerance for different styles of music increased as a result of the numerous concerts, live shows, and music that were broadcast on radio and television.14 This was the beginning of new era in Iran’s music scene.

The Emergence of Underground Music

In spite of the relaxation of regulations and the liberal atmosphere resulting from

Khatami and his ministers’ endeavors, there were regulations, such as prohibition of female solo singing, that were not lifted because they were rooted in Islamic beliefs and were not tolerated by conservatives in the country. Furthermore, expression of certain issues such as political or religious oppositional ideas continued to remain on the black list of Ershād. Not every kind of music was issued the permit during Khatami’s presidency. Consequently, female singers and many other musicians who used their music to deliver their thoughts on socio-cultural and socio-political issues remained unauthorized.

With the improvements of technology, accessibility of computers and music production softwares, and more importantly the emergence of the Internet in Iran in late

1990s, these musicians started to create and distribute their own music without the official permit (Nabavi 2013: 360). Home studios created the possibility that musicians did not need to record in officially permitted, or Mojāz, studios. Furthermore, satellites became more prevalent and MTV became part of daily lives of majority of urban middle and upper class Iranians. As a consequence, “unauthorized musicians” found the

14 It was only during Khatami’s presidency that music performance was permitted in some religious cities such as Mashhad. Later, it was banned again because of ayatollahs’ belief that music should not be performed near Imam Reza’s shrine.

required resources and space to create and distribute their works. In other words, unauthorized musicians started their musical career without the government’s support, especially because music production and distribution had become much easier than in the last decade as a result of technological advancements. This was indeed the birth and emergence of underground music in Iran. Many musicians started to release their music on Myspace or simply disseminated their songs through emails or by portable external hard memories. There was no need to sell their cassettes on the street in the black market, which was still very dangerous.

DJ Maryam, for instance, was among the first female singers who produced and distributed her songs via the Internet. Previously, she sang religious songs in religious events for female audiences only (DJ Maryam 2004). However, when she found the opportunity of making herself heard more widely, she started exploring techno-style music that brought her great success and fame in a very short time during the early

2000s. When her first, and perhaps most famous, song “Ye ye ye,” was released, it could be heard everywhere from public cabs to private underground parties. In addition to DJ Maryam and many other musicians who emerged in the underground music scene, many authorized musicians such as Shadmehr Aghili released unpermitted songs via the Internet and in the black market. In other words, a new trend of underground production and dissemination of music emerged that enabled potential musicians to enter this unofficial and illegal market.

The liberal and limitless nature of such an unsupervised underground activity led to the development of a variety of musical genres. Jazz, blues, country, rock, techno, pop, rap, and flamenco were all present in Iran’s underground scene in late 1990s. The

guitar, long an embodiment of Westernization and resistance, became a new sensation because of the availability of guitar education and the guitar’s reasonable cost in the market.15 Underground music developed and flourished by taking advantage of all available resources from technology to education and the government’s less hostile reaction to music. Numerous bands appeared in Iran’s underground music scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some of the most well-known bands during this period include 127, Maad, O-Hum, Hasht, yellow dogs, and Hyper-nova. These bands, except for Maad, were all located in Tehran, which is perhaps the reason for their recognition as early underground rock bands. This does not mean that there were no underground bands and musicians in other parts of Iran, but that the bands located in Iran’s capital attracted more attention. Journalists, foreign correspondents, documentary makers, and scholars such as Laudan Nooshin and Bronwen Robertson mainly visited and stayed in

Tehran, and thus, were only aware of these bands. In addition to Tehran-based bands, many musicians and bands appeared in other large cities such as Mashhad, Tabriz,

Isfahan, and Shiraz and helped the creation of a national subversive youth discourse that was shaped around these musicians’ shared identity as “underground musicians.”

Regardless of their location, musical interests, and performance competency, these musicians throughout Iran united and created a new youth subculture that was recognized as a potentially rebellious and subversive by the government.

The emergence of the new “underground music” stimulated debates over the labeling of this music. It was initially named as “underground” because most of these

15 Today, however, purchasing a fair guitar in Iran’s market is a big investment as a result of the world sanctions on Iran. The government does not support the import of musical instruments either so they are very expensive and not great quality instruments. Affluent musicians order their instruments from outside Iran and ask acquaintances to bring them the instruments, although the government’s taxes still apply.

bands and musicians worked and rehearsed in the basements of houses in order to be hidden from public eyes and ears. Basement, Zir Zamin in Farsi, as Laudan Nooshin notes is an interesting phenomenon in Iranian architecture and society (Nooshin 2005:

463). Being mainly Muslims, Iranians have always been concerned about the dichotomy of public and private domains. Traditionally, houses were designed with two separate areas of private and public domains known as Andaruni and Biruni (Amir-Ebrahimi

2006: 455). Basements had same function when they first appeared in Iran’s architecture, but later their function expanded. During Iran-Iraq war for instance, basements also served as shelters in the course of air raids (ibid.).

After the Islamic revolution and with government’s attempts to control and supervise the private as well as the public spheres of activity, prohibited possessions and clandestine activities were moved to the basements. Mixed male and female parties, oppositional political gatherings, minority religions’ meetings, and all other banned activities were mainly held in the basements. Furthermore, people hid their alcoholic drinks, banned books and cassettes, and all other illegal possessions in the basements. Accordingly, basement became a “secured” and highly protected environment in which people could enjoy the freedom they were not given in the public domain. In fact, it was not only the music that was underground; a great part of people’s lives was also underground. When musicians started their illegal musical activities, basements served as the most appropriate place for them. Home studios, private performances, and bands’ rehearsals were all in the basements, and thus, this music became labeled as “underground music” or Musiqi-e Zir Zamini. Therefore, the very first reason for labeling this music as “underground music” was it physical locale; just in the

same way as garage rock referred to rock that was rehearsed in garages. Underground music is both literally and figuratively “the music of the underground.”

This, however, is not the only reason for such labeling. Iran’s underground music is illegal because the government does not authorize and approve its creation and performance. Labeling this music as underground is not simply based on its illegitimacy.

There are several other factors involved as well. A major aspect of underground music is its divergence from the main commercial stream of the music industry. In Iran, underground music cannot become open commercial activity because musicians are not permitted to officially sell their music. The music is, however, distributed online and the audiences download it with no fee. Therefore, one reason for labeling this music as underground is its difficulty to become commercialized.16

Furthermore, Iran’s underground music is shaped out of a power struggle between the center, being the government with its authorized music market, and the periphery, all the authorized and unauthorized musicians operating in the underground.

It is the sound of the marginalized musicians reacting against the centers of power and control. The inherent rebellious nature of Iran’s underground music as an illegal, peripheral musical idiom, which has gained significance and power in Iranian society, is one of the main characteristics of this music influencing its definition, function and contextual importance. Iran’s underground music is produced and performed in the underground, but it is very well-received “over-ground” and in Iran’s fairly young society.

The dialectic between underground and overground, as Nooshin also points out, is a

16 Recently, independent bands and musicians aim at selling their music on the Internet, but it has not become a trend yet. Furthermore, Iran does not obey the copyright regulations, so illegal downloading is the most common way for listening to music.

defining factor of Iran’s underground music (2005). The earliest underground rock bands started their musical careers in reaction to the authorized “New Pop” music which, as was discussed earlier, had gained the approval of the reformist, liberal government and had become part of the mainstream music. Underground musicians reacted to the unfair treatment of musicians and musical genres in the procedure of issuing permits. These musicians also believed the new pop could not satisfy the musical and intellectual needs of the young generation (Sakkou 2011).

Therefore, and to sum up, Iran’s underground music was not approved by the government and its production, distribution, and performance constitute unlawful acts.

This inhibits its commodification into the mainstream music market of the country because it cannot be sold without an official permit issued by Ershād. As a result, underground rock music is associated with marginalized, suppressed musicians reacting to the central power (the government and authorized music industry), and thus, is viewed as oppositional to the state. These factors help construct an interpretive framework for this music that differentiate it from all other musical idioms produced inside and outside the country. In this sense, underground music is a music produced inside the country directly linked and in reaction to oppressive means of control by the state. Music produced by bands and musicians who have left the country might be classified as “Independent Music” of the musicians in the diaspora. Today, there are numerous musicians and bands, such as Kiosk, Ali Azimi, Abjeez, Karmandan, Shahin

Najafi, and Mohsen Namjoo, who are pursuing their musical career outside Iran and independently. Considering the fact that their music is produced and distributed by private companies and without the need for the government’s permit, it cannot be

labeled as “underground.” However, there is a great degree of musical trading between independent musicians outside Iran and URM creators. The lyrical contents, sonic structures, and visual aspects of both styles are impacted by each other mainly since the majority of these musicians used to be underground musicians who were forced to leave the country in the recent years. Unlike Los Angelesi pop stars, such independent musicians are in touch with URM bands and musicians and support them from outside the country.

Some Iranian musicians prefer the label “independent music” so that their music can be included in the categorization. They overlook the complex issues involved in the labeling of underground music and aim at broadening the framework so that it includes musicians active from outside the country as well (Rock On 2012). Some other musicians believe their categorization as “underground” musicians does benefit them but brings them more trouble from the government. Many prefer to identify themselves as “independent musicians” because they believe the illegality of their music will lead to their position as criminals in the society and will threaten their social life and future careers. As one Iranian musician told me, “We are not criminals, we are not engaged in illegal activities; we are not being stubborn. We are not political people, and we have no political agenda. We don’t want to define or put a label on ourselves. We just want to make our music” (Mehrdad, pers. comm.). Members of another band claim that “B-band is an independent Iranian music band and is not affiliated with any ethnic, political, or religious organization” (B-Band 2013). Moreover, different scholars have suggested other labels to describe this music. Bronwen Robertson has used the labels “unofficial music” and “illegal” to talk about Iran’s underground music (Robertson 2012). To him, it

is the lack of an official permit that defines this music and differentiates it from all other musical discourses of Iranian society. Both labels, however, are problematic. “Unofficial” does not do justice to Iran’s underground music in the sense that it devalues its social, musical, textual, and contextual function and significance. “Unofficial” also has the negative connotation of “unimportant.” Although underground music is not officially recognized and sanctioned by the state, it might be thought of as the de-facto official music of Iran’s cosmopolitan youth Iran’s underground music is a reaction to the “official music,” but this oppositional nature does not make it “unofficial.” Moreover, “unofficial” is not inclusive of all other aspects and associations of Iran’s underground music including its rebellious nature. By focusing on its lack of official permit, this label fails to address other complex issues involved in its production and performance including the dialectic between the center (authorities) and periphery (marginalized musicians) as well as this music’s important position among the youth and in the society.

Furthermore, labels such as “illegal” attract the states’ attention to this music as an unauthorized, criminalized activity and endangers the position of underground musicians as criminals as Mehrdad also mentioned in his interview quoted above.

Scholars who study musical practices such as URM should be aware of the potential harm their research may cause for the musicians. In case of URM, it is important to avoid such labels as it might lead to musicians’ arrests or further punishments.

In my observations, Iran’s underground musicians seem to prefer to be labeled as “independent” rather than “underground” because most of them believe that

“underground music” has too many negative connotations and makes it harder for them to secure official permits. While some musicians consider their identity as underground

musicians valuable and subversive, others have recently aimed at achieving the permit so that they can sell their music and make money out of it. Thus, they do not favor being labeled as “underground musicians” for economically pragmatic reasons.

For the sake of this research, however, I use “underground music” since it is the most comprehensive label for this musical idiom. I am convinced that no other label including independent, illegal, or unofficial, can do justice to this music as much as

“underground” does.17 There is a variety of historical, social, cultural, and political associations to Iran’s underground music that cannot be fully addressed if identified as

“independent” or “unofficial.” URM is an unofficial and independent musical idiom, but it is a lot more than that. It emerged as a youth musical reaction in the basements of Iran urban areas and developed as an independent musical idiom. Today, it has become a social phenomenon with an important place in Persian music. Iran’s underground music, therefore, is the music produced, distributed, and performed by a group of musicians who consider themselves marginalized and believe their music to be a reaction to the mainstream music market. To them, the mainstream market involves music produced inside the country with the Iranian government’s authorization or produced outside the country with the support of large record companies in Europe or United States.

Although such labels restrict music production, the liberal and dynamic nature of

Iran’s underground music has opened a space for many genres to develop as previously discussed. Among different present genres, rap and rock have gained a significant position for the audiences. In fact, to the majority of young Iranians underground music is limited to URM or underground rap music and they are simply

17 In order to respect and protect underground musicians, I only name bands and musicians whose approval I have previously gained.

unaware of the existence of underground jazz for instance. Pop-rock, country-rock, and various other subgenres of rock can be found in Iran’s underground music scene.

Musicians, nonetheless, tend to avoid associating their music with a certain genre stating that they enjoy the freedom and absence of labels and desire artistic freedom to able to include diverse musical elements in their music without being concerned about misrepresentations implied in specific genres. This line of reasoning is reflected the following quote by Kaveh Afagh.

I think the life of these labels is over. I want to be able to add anything I want to my music and I don’t to be forced to go in a certain direction because my music is labeled as such. We are making this music to stand against the imposed regulations. I don’t want to limit my imagination and creativity to these frameworks anymore (Kaveh Afagh in Rock On 2012).

Despite all such claims, the majority of underground musicians tend to distinguish and self-identify with certain genres. Rap and rock are the most prominent genres of Iran’s underground music; therefore, musicians’ success and fame is under direct impact of their label as either rappers or rockers. In addition, Iranian audiences are not well-educated about many of the nuances of different musical genres. The way musicians label themselves and their music plays the key role in perception of the music in the society (Rock On 2012).

I focus on underground rock rather than say on underground rap in this study for several reasons. First, rock emerged and gained significance in Iran before the advent of rap, and other genres. Although rap has developed rapidly in recent years, underground rock bands and musicians still outnumber rappers and their audiences.

Second, it was rock music’s inherent rebellion and defiance that made it a suitable musical idiom for reacting against the government. Rock transformed people’s minds and united them through texts and sounds, just in the same way that Bob Dylan’s music

functioned in the 60s in the United States. As a consequence, musicians and their audiences used rock music to express their rebellion before rap entered the domain of protest music. Third, and more importantly, rock music is closely associated with intellectuals in Iran. Accordingly, there are a variety of certain social, cultural, and political meanings and associations to this music that differentiate it from pop or rap.

Unlike pop music, which is associated with the mass and is considered as an entertaining musical idiom rather than having messages to convey, and rap, which utilizes colloquial language to tell stories about Iranian’s daily lives except for few songs by certain musicians such as Yas and Hichkas; rock music is considered a musical idiom developed and shaped as a medium for the expression of serious social and cultural issues through elaborate texts. Furthermore, simplicity of instrumentation and arraignments, monotonous beats in the case of rap, and lack of sophisticated and poetical texts have led to the classification of both rap and pop as mass-consumed musical genres as opposed to rock that is targeted to a specific group of consumers with a particular degree of education.18 Since 1960s, rock has belonged to educated people who knew English and could understand the complex and metaphorical lyrical contents of bands such as Pink Floyd. Today, many people still tend to associate rock music to the intellectual, well-educated, the cosmopolitan Westernized and modernized part of Iranian society.19 The only difference is that in the 1960s intellectuals belonged

18 There are long debates over the concept of intellectuality and rock music in the documentary Rock On (2012), in which the majority of musicians explain that the main difference between rap and pop is the complexity of messages expressed through music and texts. Many of the interviewees considered Persian rap as a form of protest music that is developing and is not completely shaped yet, and pop music as a mass-produced and consumed form of musical entertainment.

19 The association of intellectuality with rock music in Iran is very controversial. While some musicians believe their music is in essence more valuable than mainstream pop, because of the textual and musical elements, and claim that their audience is more literate and intellectual than the audience of mainstream

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primarily to the upper class of the society, but today it is primarily the middle class that is considered as intellectual section of the population.

The middle class in Iran consists of the service workers, small business owners and civil servants (Rezaian 2013). It mainly refers to people who work in different organizations and institutions that are run by the government including the post offices, banks, schools and universities. Middle class families value higher education and have well-educated children. They are also very well-informed about social and political issues of the society. Learning a second language, especially English, is a common value in Iranian middle class families. The majority of students who immigrate to other countries, mainly the U.S. for higher-education belong to the middle class. This class is associated with an average income, but higher than average educational achievement and cosmopolitan cultural and artistic values. Therefore, middle class in contemporary

Iran play a key role in social, cultural, and political domains.

Iran’s middle class is well-informed about Western music and their cosmopolitan musical orientation has had a great influence on Iran’s contemporary music scene.

Therefore, the significant place of URM in contemporary Iran is a consequence of its association with the educated middle class, a segment of the population that finds its voice meaningfully expressed through URM’s texts. Furthermore, its association with rebellion makes it appealing to the youth and attracts a great number of audiences and musicians.

It is now important to define what URM is and how it is distinguished from other genres both aurally and textually. Nooshin believes the new style of “rock-oriented” pop; some other musicians state that rock music belongs to illiterate laborers and mines in the West and this continues to be the case in Iran as well (Rock On 2012).

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music in Iran’s underground has created a localized brand of Iranian rock (2005: 463).

She considers “underground rock” as a huge umbrella encompassing all other genres that are mixed together and are created and consumed as Rocke Zir Zamini or URM.

Her analysis of URM as such is valid considering the fact musicians and audiences are experimenting with this new category of music. There are certainly some specific musical, social, and textual elements directly linked to rock music as an international genre, but it is the musicians’ intentions and audiences’ perception which in the end distinguish URM from other genres within Iran.

In his documentary, Rock On, Shahyar Kabiri asked people of different ages and walks of life on the streets of Tehran to define rock music. While older people interviewed expressed absolute ignorance about music in general and rock in particular, the youth pinpoint certain factors as distinguishing elements of rock, including the presence of electric guitar, its loud volume, meaningful lyrics that are not merely about love but those that address various aspects of people’s daily lives, and the musicians’ appearance, particularly their long hair, black outfits, and unusual accessories (Rock On

2012).

Considering Nooshin’s idea about URM as a localized form of rock music and the way the audience perceives URM, it is logical to conclude that URM’s definition is highly dependent on its relationship and distinction from other musical genres, particularly

Persian popular music. Similar to the way Persian popular music is identified through its differences from Persian traditional and folk music, URM is identified as popular music that is not pop or “rap. Its identity is located largely on the important role of the electric guitar (and the absence of Persian traditional instruments), its loud volume, its 4/4 meter

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(contrasting with the dominant 6/8 meter of Persian pop music), and its creative use of distorted tones and timbres. Furthermore, URM is identified as having meaningful lyrics

(unlike popular music) that address important aspects of Iranian people’s daily lives.

URM is also contrasted with commercial pop music in the division of labor used to produce songs. Unlike pop stars, URM creators compose and arrange their own music and write the lyrics of the songs on their own. This enables URM to convey the emotions and concerns of the musicians who are performing the music more directly, whereas in popular music singers typically deliver the lyrics written by songwriting specialists. This has become the most significant aspect of URM because the audience believes that the musicians are expressing emotions and feelings from personal experiences. URM, therefore, is aurally, visually, and textually distinguished from pop.

Admittedly, rap music is written and produced by independent musicians as well; however, the use of colloquial language, the fact that most rappers are either teens or in their early twenties, and the less socially and culturally important issues expressed through the lyrics, have led to a lower degree of significance for rap music and its messages among the audiences.

Furthermore, URM creators are distinguished from pop stars in a variety of other ways. Rock musicians are mostly young, middle class, educated, creative, urban, globalized and forward-looking males (with exception of very few females), who follow certain international trends in fashion and hairstyles. They are also typically trained instrumentalists with the technical ability to record, mix, and produce their own music.

Pop stars, on the other hand, are primarily vocalists who sing music written and produced in the studio by others. Thus, their music is often considered to not reflect

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their personal ideas or emotions. Also, pop stars, though they may have come from the middle class, no longer belong to the middle class. They are wealthy stars who can only be seen in television shows or in concerts, contrary to underground rockers who can be seen on the streets of Tehran or other cities. URM creators project an image of being down to earth musicians who live the lives of ordinary people and can thus speak to their sorrows, pains, and joys of ordinary people. While pop stars tend to distance themselves from their fans in large, luxurious stages, rockers build friendly relationship with their fans through private small performances or via their Facebook fan pages.

In the last ten years, underground rockers have created a specific position for themselves as ambitious, educated, and talented musicians. Today, Iranian society is aware of the presence of URM and how it is produced, performed and distributed. In spite of the government’s attempts to create an image of a degenerate subculture of

Satanism, drug consumption, uncontrolled sexual relationships between unmarried youth with deviants corrupting the country’s youth, URM has continued to develop musically and socially (ISNA 2012). The old image of rock musicians corrupting the youth has now changed to an image of artists who are rebelling against the government and are now opening the public sphere.

Nowadays, there are numerous underground rock bands and musicians all around the country, and more and more musicians are joining them. The unquestioned centrality of Tehran in regard to URM has also given way to a wider spread of this music into other large cities and also into in small towns in Iran. Musicians who are associated with URM still mainly produce their music in home studios and perform in private underground locations, but are not confined by their physical location anymore. Social

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networks have enabled them to reach out to larger audience outside their home town or even outside Iran. Aiming at a larger audience, they show continued enthusiasm about songs in English. While, as Nooshin and Robertson have argued, URM is linked to notions of Iranian-ness, these musicians’ attempt to find transnational spaces and global audiences for their music is reflective of their interest in transcending the national borders and creating a global youth identity. As Kaveh Afagh puts it

I always wanted to make universal music and that is why I started my music making with writing English songs. I think it is time to go beyond the borders and enter the global market because I believe our rock music and musicians are completely capable of standing out in the global market (Kaveh Afagh 2011).

Several musicians agree with Kaveh Afagh saying that Iranian youth have experienced years and years of seclusion and separation from global youth as a result of the government’s policies and actions. They believe they can create a better relationship with the West through raising awareness about themselves and communicating with the youth all around the world. Several rock and metal festivals in

Turkey, Netherlands, and Armenia are indicative of their interest and endeavors in doing so (Prindle 2014). Moreover, many Iranian bands such as Arasmes, Master of Persia, and Azhirock produce only English-language songs claiming that English is the universal language and can relate and connect people (Azhirock 2011). Iranian musicians and audiences, thus, are becoming more and more globalized through the consumption and production of rock music.

In this Chapter, my goal was to define and position URM in its context and explain how it emerged developed as a social phenomenon in modern Iranian society in reaction to issues of government control over artistic production. I aimed at describing the political and socio-cultural aspects that influenced its production and consumption.

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Moreover, I investigated the definition of rock and significance of underground music among musicians and consumers in order to shed light on who underground musicians are and how their audiences perceive them. Discussions on Iran’s political situation, positioning URM and underground musicians as marginalized within the society and understanding URM as an oppositional musical idiom will provide the basis for the following chapter, Chapter 4, in which musical and lyrical analysis of a sample of URM songs will lead to a better understanding of this music as a defiant musical idiom in modern Iran.

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Figure 3-1. Shadmehr Aghili’s authorized album cover released in 1999 (Shadmehr Aghili 2014).

Figure 3-2. Arian Band photographed in Tehran (Arian Band Official Website).

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CHAPTER 4 THE EXPRESSION OF RESISTANCE IN URM: SIX CASE STUDIES

In the previous Chapters I introduced the background and context of rock music in Iran and explored the emergence and development of URM as a diverse, developing musical idiom that is the offspring of early Iranian rock bands of the 1960s. I clarified the influence of the Islamic Revolution of 1979 on musical activities in Iran and explained how the government has attempted to control modern Iran’s music scene through its policies of issuing permits and censoring lyrics. Having discussed the evolution of early rock music to today’s URM during years of drastic political, cultural, economic and social transformations, in the present Chapter I aim at shedding light on the role of URM in modern Iranian society.

This Chapter explores the meaning and function of URM as a medium for youth rebellious expression in contemporary Iran. I argue that URM is not a mere imitation of a pre-existing Western musical genre, as was largely the case with early rock bands of the 1960s. It is now a vehicle for voicing the youths’ oppositions against socio-cultural and socio-political issues that plague current Iranian society. I investigate a variety of issues that have caused objections among the Iranians since the Islamic Revolution of

1979, particularly economic recession and increases in the rate of unemployment. Upon clarifying these issues, I explore a sample of URM songs that address such issues textually, aurally and, visually. The six songs that I have selected as case studies are all different from each other in regard to the lyrical contents, musical and visual aspects.

Having been produced by different musicians, each one of these songs is about one (or more) significant issue(s) that led to Iranians’ dissatisfaction and opposition. It is important to note that URM’s repertoire is enormous and the songs I have selected for

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this research are just a sample used as case studies; therefore, this analysis is by no means exhaustive of all URM songs. The selection is done based on, first, the songs’ reception and success among URM audiences, and second, their relevance as an expression of resistance. Through these analyses, I illuminate how URM functions as an expression of objections and criticisms among young Iranians.

As was discussed in section of methodology, my description and analysis of the songs cover three main dimensions; the aural, textual, and visual. In the musical analysis I explain instruments and vocal styles. I also transcribe melodies that have specific significance in the songs. I also provide information on specific chord progressions in different songs to reflect on harmonic structures.

Moreover, because of the traditional importance of the lyrics in Persian music and the heavy emphasis on texts in conveying the messages through songs, I have translated songs’ lyrics to English to give a better representation of the expression of resistance. I discuss the metaphorical and poetic phrases in order to clarify their significance and range of meaning. The majority of URM songs are set to Persian lyrics, unlike the 1960s and 1970s Iranian rock when there were substantial instrumental pieces written.1 URM songs that are set to English lyrics are outnumbered by Persian songs and tend to be not as successful as Persian songs. Therefore, I focus on songs with Persian lyrics.

Visual aspect of URM songs is also of particular importance in the expression of oppositional messages. Video clips have gained a special position in the dissemination

1 Instrumental songs are mainly created for getting the approval of the Council for Authorization of Poems. As was discussed in the Chapter 2, the Council for Authorization of Poems maintains strict regulations for the lyrical contents of songs in the process of issuing permits.

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of URM songs on social media, websites, and television channels.2 YouTube is becoming increasingly influential in the distribution of music globally. Despite governmental attempts to block it in Iran, YouTube is still accessed by the people and is used to share and view new music videos. Furthermore, advancements of technology have enabled many artists to explore their artistic talents in creating video clips. Video clip production, in fact, has become a new profession among the youth. Consumers also consider the visual aspect of the songs as a major criterion for overall success assessment. As a matter of fact, URM bands that do not produce video clips for their songs do not normally receive as much success and fame. Considering these factors, I investigate the visual aspects of URM songs in my case studies to show how visual elements aide the delivery of the lyrical contents and enhance the expression of resistance.

The Examination of Socio-cultural and Socio-political Issues

Understanding URM as a medium for expressing oppositional opinions requires familiarity with issues that are causing dissatisfactions in the society in the first place.

During the last 35 years, since 1979, various issues have triggered objections and protests among Iranians. Dissatisfaction with the government’s policies and actions is not restricted to highly politicized issues such as the country’s nuclear program which led to internationally imposed sanctions, or the controversial presidential election of

Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad in 2009. People are also dissatisfied with a variety of cultural and economic issues that impact daily life in the country. Severe censorship over media

2 There are numerous Farsi-speaking television channels broadcast from outside Iran. These channels are received via satellites inside Iran and since Iran’s public television channels do not show any music (and other un-Islamic shows and movies) these private television channels have gained a prominent position among people.

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and the press, suppression of minority groups and religions, the high rate of unemployment, financial inflation and economic recession, women’s inequality in the society (symbolized through the mandatory covering of the female body in public spheres), the spread of prostitution as one of the consequences of poverty, and the unfair distribution of wealth especially among authorities and Mullahs are among issues that concern the people.

It is important to note that all of these socio-political and socio-cultural objections are intertwined and interrelated. For instance, the influence of international sanctions on

Iran is not limited to economic recession inside the country. Medications that were previously imported to the country are now unavailable (Borger and Dehghan 2013).

Cancer patients, for example, suffer directly from these sanctions because they can no longer purchase their medication inside the country. Furthermore, most countries no longer trade with Iran, specific machinery and tools such as aviation equipment are no longer imported to the country. Plane crashes and road and train accidents have dramatically increased in the last decade resulting in the loss of many lives. Therefore, one problem leads to another and people’s dissatisfactions about specific issues evoke oppositions against bigger problems and form a more important discourse of resistance.

Moreover, as was addressed in Chapter 3, various aspects of the society underwent radical changes in the first decade after the Islamic Revolution. Although Iran has witnessed ups and downs in the past thirty five years, the overall political and social situation has remained more or less the same. Personal freedom is still restricted, women are obliged to cover their body and hair, artistic productions are still being closely monitored by the authorities, and the economic situation has deteriorated

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drastically. Admittedly, these issues have caused different degrees of dissatisfaction and reactions among the Iranian people.

The youth, comprising over 60 percent of Iran’s population, face these issues directly and stand out as the most important segment of opposition in the population. In the past ten years unemployment has become a major struggle for the youth and for the government (Iran Unemployment Rate 2014). The country’s economic situation is unstable and authorities have not been able to create sufficient jobs. As a result, the majority of young Iranians pursue higher education in hope of getting better employment after receiving a degree. Youth unemployment, then, leads to their inability to start families. This contributes to other problems such as an increase in prostitution.

Additionally, Iran’s youth are strictly monitored and suppressed because the government is aware of the youth’s oppositional potential and fear its power in overthrowing the government as was the case with Pahlavi monarchy. Because of this, youth gatherings are highly controlled and every aspect of personal and private life is under the authorities’ close supervision. Their personal choices of clothing and appearance, for instance, are closely monitored by the government. Iran’s Police

Department has dedicated specific forces to appear in different street corners and arrest people who do not follow Islamic dress code properly (Trend 2013). Gashte Ershād

(Guidance Patrol), is not only responsible for enforcing the obligatory use of the hijab by women, but also is in charge of checking men’s clothes and hairstyles. Today, one can get accused of looking too westernized and un-Islamic and get arrested on the streets of different cities in Iran. Besides, several other voluntary forces such as Ansar

Hezbollah and Basij, mentioned also in Chapter 3, are certified to guide (attack or

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arrest) the youth (Ansar Hezbollah’s Letter 2014). These civilian organizations patrol the streets and force people to wear proper Islamic clothes. Basij and Ansār are civilian not governmental forces; however, they are authorized to deal with un-Islamic appearances or behaviors in public or private domains. They can arrest unmarried couples accused of “Rābet’e Nā Mashru”, maintaining an unlawful and un-Islamic relationship. Moreover,

Gashte Ershād, Basij, and Ansār are also authorized to raid people’s private gathering and parties. This includes concerts and musical activities’, at any time (ISNA 2012). In the recent years, restriction of people’s personal freedom has caused substantial oppositions among the youth.

The inequality of women’s position in the society is another major source of conflict in Iran. Since 1979, women have faced unfair treatments in several aspects of their lives. In addition to the mandatory hijab and inequality of certain rights on the basis of Islamic regulations such as having half of men’s blood money, or not having the right of divorce or the children’s custody; women face restrictions in attending specific fields of study at the universities(Sahraei 2012). They are not allowed to perform certain activities such as entering sport stadiums either (Dearden 2014). Women’s unfair position in the society and their suppression in several aspects of social lives have led to different reactions from both men and women, but the authorities still oppress women in various arenas.

Authorities’ supervision over an individual’s personal life extends to their virtual activities as well. The Iranian government maintains severe censorship over the Internet since it has emerged in Iran. Various websites and social networks such as YouTube,

Instagram and Facebook are blocked in Iran. The government has lowered the Internet

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speed so that surfing and downloading is not easily done. Access to several websites is denied and the users must resort to anti-filters to view different websites (Lee 2013).

Very recently Grand Ayatollah Nasser Makarem-Shirazi pronounced that “3G mobile services are against sharia law and violate human and moral norms” (Sullivan 2014).

Apparently, Islamic authorities aim at maintaining severe censorship over the Internet believing that through the Internet the youth have access to the outside world.

Furthermore, political activities and riots can be arranged through social media similar to what happened in the political riots of 2009.

Therefore, youth opposition against government is not confined to economic and political issues. Youth’s educational, artistic, and professional lives are being closely monitored and straying too far from the correct path can have devastating results. In such circumstances, the youth have three choices: to be indifferent and passive, to find ways to express their dissatisfactions and then facing the consequences, or immigrating to other counties to bring a change to their own personal lives. While all options are possible and present in the society, the expression of resistance in different ways has come to prominence among all three options in the past two decades.

Vehicles for the Expression of Resistance

The youth have aimed at finding, creating or repurposing a variety of media for expressing their objections. Journalism, web logging, cinema, music, theater, poetry and literature are among several vehicles the youth have been utilizing to convey their oppositions against aforementioned issues since the early years after the revolution. In recent years, various types of underground activities including underground play-acting, movie screening, poetry reading, and political meetings have emerged in Iran, in addition to the explosion of underground rock music. Unpermitted, gheire mojāz, play

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and movie scripts as well as literature and poetry are shared with small audiences in private gatherings, away from the public eye. Web logging has also become a major medium for resistant expression because of the Internet’s growth and accessibility despite the government’s attempts at censoring it. Graffiti is another medium of oppositional expression which has become very widespread in large cities such as

Tehran. One graffitist nicknamed Black Hand has recently become very famous for his overtly critical paintings on Tehran walls (Dehghan 2014). One of his paintings in

Tehran criticizes one female parliament member who had previously told women to stay home and wash the dishes instead of fighting for their rights to watch sports in stadiums

(Figure 4-1).

However, the government deals with each medium of expression. Several journalists, movie and documentary makers, and webloggers have been imprisoned in the recent years for criticizing the government or for simply bringing attention to different issues, particularly during and after the political riots following the presidential election of Mahmoud Ahmadi Najd in 2009 (Dehghan 2013; Brooks 2012). Activists are mainly accused of "making propaganda against the system" and face different sentences based on the nature and degree of oppositional behavior. Each medium having its own advantages and downsides and targeting specific audiences, has gained a certain place in the expression of defiance and reacting against the system.

Among different media of resistant expression, underground rock and rap music have a prominent position due to several factors. First, technological advancements have simplified production, recording, and dissemination of music. As was discussed in

Chapter 3, home studios have now replaced the need for well-equipped officially

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permitted studios. Through the Internet, music is easily and quickly spread and hundreds and hundreds of Internet-users, in particular Facebook users, are able to consume and re-distribute the music. Second, it is much safer for musicians than other artists because they do not need to physically go to the streets similar to the graffitist, or to attend political riots, or take their cameras to the streets to film certain events as documentary film makers or journalists. Musicians now write, record, and distribute their songs from inside their homes. Furthermore, their audience is much larger than webloggers or journalists since not everyone shows and interest in politics and reads newspapers and blogs, but the overwhelming majority of people listen to music.

Accordingly, expression of opposition through underground music, in any genre, is easy and safe, and targets large audiences. Underground musicians, however, choose mostly either rap or rock because of the rebellious associations of both genres which enables them to utilize the lyrical contents and musical aspects to deliver their messages. Despite the fact that earliest musical forms of rebellion was through URM, today there are several rappers such as Yas and Hichkas who address political and socio-cultural issues in their songs as well. URM has an outstanding position among different media of subversive expression as a result of rock music’s rebellious nature embedded in loud and distorted sounds that are augmented by critical lyrics and distinctive vocal styles.

Addressing the Rebellious Nature of URM

As a non-sanctioned musical form in Iran, URM is seen as inherently rebellious and oppositional to the state. In other words, gathering in groups, picking up instruments, singing and playing music in the undergrounds is essentially an act of rebellion against the dominant power. Music making without the permit is itself a

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subversive action, let alone the use of lyrics critical of socio-cultural or political issues.

Even when the lyrical contents do not overtly criticize the regime and are simply addressing issues of love and humans’ emotion, the nature of the expression is seen as angry resistance from an unapologetic and powerful position rather than as simply an expression of universal human sentiments.

Furthermore, URM’s severe oppressions from the government and its delegated authorities’ harsh reactions to this musical idiom have transformed it to a social phenomenon with embedded meanings in it. As Nooshin has shown, the earliest URM songs of groups like 127 and O-Hum do not demonstrate any oppositional messages

(2005). Gradually and after encountering strict censorship and suppression from the government, URM began to take shape as a form of musical opposition. In other words, it was the state’s reactions and policies toward URM that attributed certain oppositional aspects to it. Later the musicians became cognizant of their significant positions as active agents of opposition through music. It was via early songs of Mohsen Namjoo,

Abdi Behravanfar and Kiosk band that URM began to be perceived and then used as medium for oppositional remarks.

In such a context, expression of resistance through music gains its validity from the surrounding environment, which includes government’s reactions and consumers’ perception. According to Andy Nercessian in Postmodernism and Globalization in

Ethnomusicology, cultural associations and conventions give meaning to the music, not the creators’ intentions, which may or may not be understood (2002:115). Even when the lyrical contents do not state such issues and the creators do not have such objectives, the cultural and social associations of URM may lead to multiple

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interpretations. Such autonomy of music, as Nercessian puts it, creates value for etic perspectives and questions the value of emic perspectives, since the insiders’/creators’ understandings and purposes might differ from the autonomous meaning and function of music and consumers’ perception.

Let the Music Talk

Having discussed the historical background, emergence, context and significance of URM in modern-day Iranian society, it is now time to analyze and investigate the music itself. For this purpose, I have selected seven songs, taken from a rock band (The Ways), a heavy metal band (Electroqute), and a rock musician (Hooman

Ajdari) to illuminate the expression of resistance through musical and extra-musical aspects. I include musicians from different cities of Iran to show how their songs are related to each other and that expression of rebellious is not restricted to musicians in certain locales. All the songs were recorded in underground private studios and distributed via the Internet. Musicians will be first introduced so that their social class, education level, age group, and musical ideas and objectives are clarified. Then, each song is explored in regard to its visual, textual, and musical aspects. In the end, conclusions are made based on the music and its role in the expression of resistance.

The Ways

The Ways, a rock band of four musicians, was formed in Mashhad in 2005. The original band members, Alireza Pourreza (founder of the band and keyboard player),

Kaveh Afagh (lead guitarist and vocalist), Hamed Ghannad (bass player and vocalist), and Iman Mohammadi (drummer and main lyricist), started their musical careers with a

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band named Kāviān in the early 2000s (The Ways 2013).3 They initially played popular music (popular in terms of common aural and lyrical aspects of Persian popular music) and had several performances in Mashhad during the presidency of Khatami. After

Ershād rejected their request for an official permit, The Ways’ members began producing underground music under the name Empire, which was later changed to The

Ways. In their interview with a CBC radio channel of Canada, they introduced themselves as four people with different musical tastes, aesthetics, and life ideologies, who are connected only through music-making, and thus, The Ways is the best name for them as a band (The Ways 2013).

Similar to majority of URM bands, The Ways’ members met during their undergraduate years at university. Having degrees in fields other than music, they are all active in other professions. Iman is a lawyer, Alireza and Hamed are engineers, and

Kaveh is an architect. In their various interviews with different television channels, including Canada CBC radio channel, they put heavy emphasis on belonging to the middle class (ibid.).4 Alireza, for instance, stated that he belongs to the middle class, his mother being a teacher and his father a clerk in Iran’s National Organization for Civil

Registrations (Sāzemān Sabte Ahvāle Keshvar) (The Ways 2011). Except for Kaveh, whose parents are professional artists, other band members’ parents are not professionally involved in any artistic activities.

3 Kaveh Afagh left the band in 2013 to pursue his individual musical career and was replaced by Pedram Azad. Afagh is now waiting for the result of his permit request. He has been able to perform live outside Milād Tower in Tehran in the National Festival of Resistance (a Festival in remembrance of Iran- Iraq martyrs) in 2013. Alireza Pourreza and Hamed Ghannad moved to North America and continue their musical cooperation with the band remotely. The band has applied for the official permit and is hopeful to get one so that they can perform in Iran.

4 I conducted personal interviews with Alireza Pourreza and Hamed Ghannad. Iman and Kaveh’s quotes are cited from their interview with “Sakkou” interview series produced by Manoto TV network.

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The Ways’ members, therefore, address issues that are particularly important to the middle class. They are concerned about Iran and also about significant socio- cultural and socio-political issues in world affairs. On their official website they have clarified their position as musicians and the goals in their musical career “The members are mostly concerned about social issues, war and its effects, racial and sexual discriminations, poverty, nepotism and hypocrisy (The Ways 2008).”

Stress, their first album released online on their official website and Facebook fan page in 2010, includes eleven songs with texts addressing diverse issues such as patriarchy, nationalism, war, prostitution, loneliness, the unfair distribution of wealth, and gender inequalities. “Tehran” and “Shahre Man Koo?” (Where is My City?) are two of the songs selected for this study based on their public reception, success and fame, and musical and lyrical aspects. Both songs are overtly critical of the government actions and flawed socio-cultural norms of society.

“Shahre man koo?” (where is my city?)

“Shahre Man Koo?” was released during political riots after the election of

Ahmadi Nejad and gained a specific meaning and significance in its political context.

Persian BBC broadcast the video clip and addressed the overt political message of its lyrics. Band members, however, rejected such attributions and claimed that the song was written long before the presidential election and addresses negative consequences of Iran- Iraq war (Band Members, pers. comm.). The lyrics, written by Kaveh Afagh, can be easily interpreted as politically aggressive. Kaveh’s denial, thus, was perhaps an attempt to protect the band from possible governmental threats.

Shahre Man Koo’s significance lies in its text, and in the aural and visual aspects that gave it a prominent rebellious function in its political context in 2009. Musically, the

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song projects a melancholic atmosphere with a simple [Em—Em—D—D—Am—Am—

Em—Em] chord progression. It begins with the soundscape of a war or protest through the inclusion of samples of crowd noise, women’s screams, and shotgun blasts.

Keyboard, drums, electric and bass guitar begin and close the song with [Em—D—C—

C/B] chord cycle. There is no clear organization of verses, bridges, and refrains in the song. Constant melodic, texture, and volume variations accompanied by each verse result in absence of a chorus that attracts the listener’s attention. All verses are structured over the main chord progression [Em—Em—D—D—Am—Am—Em—Em] with minor melodic transpositions. The transcriptions in Examples 4-1 and 4-2 show the smooth melodic line that matches the song’s lyrical content and the melancholic atmosphere of the song. There are vibrations on certain long notes but the overall vocal line is devoid of extreme embellishments. The simplicity of vocal line matches the clean and undistorted guitar tone as well.

The song’s constant change of dynamics between low, whisper-like vocals and loud guitar and drum, and dense textures aggravated by singer’s shouts creates a sense of uncertainty and anxiety that is reflective of a war soundscape in the periods of trauma and temporary interruptions. Sadness is expressed through soft vocals and piano accompaniments, while anger is delivered via loud drums, electric guitars, and vocalist’s shouts. Although 6/8 beat is commonly found in Persian dance tunes, it is used in other contexts as well. It is the percussions and other instruments that highlight the dance-like nature of the 6/8 beat. In dance songs, Tombak5 is the main percussion instrument and emphasizes on the fast rhythmic figures that create an energetic and

5 Tombak is a Persian goblet drum and is considered the principal Percussion instrument of Persian folk and classical music.

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joyful atmosphere. In this song, 6/8 is played on the drums set, with an emphasis on the high hats, and creates a mysterious and anxious atmosphere that suites the song’s text.6 This is a good instance for the concepts of glocalization and indigenization. The band used the global template of rock music with Western harmony and instruments and incorporated the Persian common 6/8 beat and gave the global form a local flavor that is more relatable for the local consumer.

The lyrical contents intensify these musical fluctuations by addressing war and its consequences through the use of very poetic and figurative language (Table 4-1). The first verse describes the context of the song. A war-stricken place is visualized through the description of ruins, blood, and explosion and shotgun blasts. The city is ruined and many have been killed. Rain of ash indicates fire and explosions. Having described the place, the singer then asks a rhetorical question “who can claim it was once my city?”

“Women’s anklets made of bullets” reflects local women’s resistance against the war; they not only have refused to leave their homes, but also wear anklets made of bullet shells to show their courage and power.

“Son’s lifeless lip and father’s blood-covered poem” is an amphibological phrase that references the “Rostam and Sohrāb” story in Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāmeh (The Epic of

Kings), a set of epic mythological stories in Persian poetry. “Rostam and Sohrāb” is the story of a father (Rostam) who ignorantly kills his own son (Sohrab) in a battle. Right after his death, Rostam figures out that Sohrāb was his own son and mourns his death in poetry. The battle between Rostam and Sohrab is, in fact, a metaphor for the battle between a human’s wisdom and choice and his destiny (Panacea after Sohrab's Death

6 See Farzaneh Hemmasi for further discussions on Persian dance song beat 6/8 (Hemmasi 2010: 250).

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2014). In the song, the father mourning for his son’s death in poetry is a reference to

“Rostam and Sohrāb.” Blood-covered poem is a metaphor for pain and the sorrow.

Father’s mourning for his son can be interpreted as one generation mourning for the next generation having lost hopes and lives during the war. These types of literary references reflect the fact that URM is created by educated middle-class musicians.

The second and third verses describe how the city’s landscape has changed during the war. Once it had nice houses with arches7 and balconies. City’s main square and statues are destroyed and nothing is left anymore except for the ruins. It is not only the city that is affected by the war, but also the humans and their relationships, perhaps as a result of deaths or mandatory immigrations. The singer asks” where is alley of my memories, where is you warm kiss?” And shouts “My city is dead, oh God where is my city?” He blames bad destiny at the end of second verse, while in the third verse addresses God and asks him what has happened to the city.

In the last verse, white cloud (a symbol of honesty and purity in Persian literature) is asked to denounce the moon, reveal the ugly truth and uncover humans’ catastrophic fate. The full moon, being a sign of bad luck, calamity and misery, anticipates the happening of something disastrous, which is out human control. This verse concludes with a positively hopeful message “things will change.” White cloud will cover the full moon and happiness will replace the misery. The dark, gloomy image depicted throughout the song using the metaphors and allegories is eventually completed with a hopeful ending. The picture can refer to both destructions after Iran-

Iraq war and oppressed political unrests. The text can be interpreted as a hopeful

7 Arches were signifiers of Islamic-Persian architecture of Iran in the last century.

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message to people who suffered from the government’s violent suppressions in 2009 political demonstrations or those who lost their lives and shelters during the Iran-Iraq war, or both.

“Shahre Man Koo” has two video clips: one is the band’s official video that was released on October 11, 2009 on Alireza’s YouTube channel and has been viewed

21,378 times (as of September 22, 2014). The location depicted in the video resembles the debris of a building destroyed during the war. According to the Ways keyboardist

Alireza:

We never talked about the interpretation and significance of location. It was Kaveh and Farhad’s (the director) idea, but everyone had their own perception of the location. To me it is the remains of a house which was bombed and collapsed during the war (Alireza, pers. comm.).

In the video there is a bathtub, a toilet, and a sink with a mirror. Band members are shown playing their instruments rather normally except for the vocalist, Kaveh. He is shown singing while he is lying in the tub, sitting on the toilet, and cleaning the mirror.

His acts resemble the activities of a rather normal life, while the context of the location is paradoxically abnormal. This video was the band’s second official video clip and did not attract much attention among their fans. A number of YouTube viewers have also left comments saying that did not like the video clip, but enjoyed the text and the song very much. Commentators have mentioned musicians’ bad acts, fake movements and facial expressions, exaggerated actions and poor videography as their reasons for not liking this video (Shahre Man Koo 2009). A second video for the same song was released three years later (on October 22, 2012) on YouTube with a total view of 1,976 as of

April 24, 2014 (The Ways 0209). The video depicts Kaveh Afagh in camouflage military clothes in a deserted area strewn with what looks like war debris. There is a little boy

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sitting in a destroyed house waiting for help, and Kaveh is shown running through ponds and on fire buildings carrying a gun. Other band members did not take part in this video clip, which is apparently a response to political attributions they initially received from television networks, news agencies, and fans in social media.

“Tehran”

“Tehran” is one of The Way’s first songs. It achieved great success and fame soon after it was released in 2009 and could be heard in cafes, restaurants, and public cabs. I first heard this song in a café in Mashhad. The lyrics attracted my attention as being overtly and harshly critical of the government. The band, which was not nationally famous at the time, was aware of possible threats and dangers, therefor, they did not publicize the song as much as they did for their other songs. Poignant lyrical content of the song, however, attracted the youths’ attention to the song and to The Ways as an oppositional rock band.

“Tehran” begins with the abrupt entrance of the vocalist, with no instrumental prelude, which intensifies the delivery of lyrical content. The listener’s attention is immediately directed to the words before the instruments enter and play their parts.

Then, a sparse instrumentation of electric guitar, bass, and drums, highlights the central and significant role for the vocalist to show the vocal techniques and reinforce the text’s meaning. The singer’s voice fluctuates between an aggressive angry tone and falsetto singing resembling female and children’s voices. The song is rhythmically and harmonically simple [Am—Em—F—C/G]. A steady rhythm is played on the drums; with no virtuosic or complicated rhythmic figures. The electric guitar’s loud ending solo is an embodiment of the resentment present in the song that is highlighted by singer’s shouts.

The guitar’s sound is distorted and overridden that perfectly suits the vocalists angry

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tone. There is a sense of paradox between the fast tempo, which is frequently associated with happiness and dance in Persian music and the emotional and sad lyrical content that reinforces the sentimental atmosphere created by the choir. In addition, the resentment is expressed through singer’s angry tone and loud electric guitar. The song’s straightforward melody helps the listener focus on the words rather than the melodic, harmonic or rhythmic changes between verses, bridge, and the refrain. The vocal melody is transcribed to give the reader a sense of what the song’s main melodic line sounds like over the given harmonic progression (Example 4-3).

There are various significant issues addressed in this song. Kaveh Afagh, the lyricist, has observed the increase in unemployment rate, poverty and prostitution as some of the most critical issues plaguing Iran’s urban areas, in particular Tehran. In a personal conversation with him after the song was released, I asked why and how he noticed such issues. He explained he had observed a great number of unemployed workers waiting for jobs early in the mornings when he went to school and that this observation had deeply upset him. In Iran, it is common for unemployed laborers to wait on specific street corners for the contractors who need workers for temporary projects.

Kaveh had also noticed a great number of women waiting on such corners late at nights when he went back home, and that was how he wrote the lyrics (Table 4-2).

The phrases “From Tajrish to Shahre No…” and “From Shemroon to Shahyād

Square…” reflect on the fact that prostitution is spread all over the city and is no longer restricted to Shahre No, which was Tehran’s red light district before the Islamic

Revolution. Having restricted it to one specific area of Tehran (Shahre No), Pahlavi’s government was able to control prostitution in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, however, it

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has become a serious social issue in Iran, and is very ironic considering the “Islamic” theocratic nature of the government. This song, thus, harshly criticizes the Islamic authorities for their wrong actions and policies that led, however unintentionally, to the spread of prostitution.

“Our bread is hidden here under my dress’s button” is a sentence from the mother of the family to her unemployed husband. In Iran bread is the main food, and the phrase “our bread is hidden under my dress” is a direct reference to prostitution and a woman’s act of making money using her body. This is also the case with the other sentence “Our bread is hidden under my skirt.” The woman condoles her husband by saying “Don’t panic my man; my body will take care of this.” Tehran’s bad smell of the sewage and landfills that is mainly noticeable early mornings before the traffic starts giving out fumes is frequently linked to prostitution that takes place at nights and contaminates the city.

Right before chorus and its repetition, there is a question asked by this family’s children: “Where is mom tonight?” This question, sung in falsetto, intensifies the sentimental absence of a mother at night who is supposed to be singing lullabies for her children. The backing vocals singing the syllables “La La La” imitates the sound of lullaby for the children highlighting the absence of their mother (Example 4-4 for the backing vocal melody). This imitation of lullaby is also an expression of man and woman’s silent grief as the mother says, “Sing the lullaby my man.”

Husband and wife’s emotions are expressed explicitly. Man is depressed, angry, and confused. Woman is emotional, devotional, and selfless. She is sacrificing her pride and her body to protect her family. The refrain reinforces the sentiments; “Man is tired,

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woman is tired, body is tired because Tehran is tired.” Woman is physically, and emotionally, exhausted. Man is also tired perhaps since he could not sleep being occupied by his sorrows and pains. Tehran is tired because of its restless nights during which different crimes, including prostitution, take place. There is also a metaphorical reference to Tehran suffering from all injustice and pain its residents experience.

Tehran’s visual aspect plays a key role in understanding its position and perception among the audience. The band’s cautions about releasing and publicizing this song led to their decision to not produce a video clip for it. Soon after its release, however, a video clip was posted on YouTube on October 9, 2012. It depicts Tehran and its residents in their daily life, but mainly focuses on the dark side of life by showing laborers, the poor, heavy traffic, crowded subways, street fights, ghettos, the homeless, and drug addicts. Alireza published this video on his YouTube channel with the following caption: “This is not an official video of the song Tehran; it is created by a Fan”

(Alireza Pourreza 2012).

This video was made by a fan and has been viewed 20,069 times. It has several comments mostly saying how realistic and touching the song is and how powerfully it impacted the listeners. Amin Gh, one commentator had said: “Awesome lyrics, took me a while to get (understand) it, OMFG” (Figure 4-2). Apparently, the song’s metaphorical and poetic lyrics are challenging for even a native Farsi speaker. There are two other video clips for this song made by The Ways’ fans, released on YouTube. These anonymous people’s passion for this song and their efforts for creating accompanying visual aspects for it are indicative of the impact it has had on the audience, and how they have related to the song and the social and economic problem it is pointing at.

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The release of “Tehran” and “Shahre Man Ko” led to national recognition and publicity of The Ways as a rock band with meaningful lyrics and creative music. The band has found a significant place in URM as a reputable rock band with many fans.

The Ways has undergone various changes since then including members’ replacements and immigration of two members to North America. However, the band members are still working together and have chosen to apply for an Iranian government’s permit so that they can perform in Iran. Although Hamed and Alireza are not living in Iran at the moment, they both maintain that if an official permit is issued for the band’s activities, they will go back to Iran for performances and meeting the fans.

I will not accept any conditions they offer in order to issue the permit. The only reason I need the permit is to see my audience and to play for them. But, I am not going to change my style, my lyrics, and my music. I hope they will accept our music the way it is. We have recruited someone to do the legal work in Iran and complete the application procedure, and we hope we will hear from them very soon (Hamed Ghannad, pers. comm.)

Hamed clarified that if the government gives them the permit on the condition that they change their songs musically or lyrically, they will not accept it. Hamed and

Alireza both believe that in order to continue their music making as effective and influential as they started, they need to be in touch with their audience, experience their difficulties, and live their lives.

ElectroqutE

ElectroqutE is a metal rock band located in Karaj, an industrial city near Tehran.8

Their Facebook page and official website states that the band was formed in 2007 and has released an album of eight songs as well as various singles since then (ElectroqutE

8 Their website says the band was formed in Tehran, but in their interview they mentioned they live and work in Karaj. They put Tehran on the website in order to be associated with the capital and main bands that are active in there.

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2014). The band originally consisted of five members; Amir V. and Behrouz on electric guitar, Reza Gholami on bass guitar, Mohammad Reza T.T on drums, and Mehrdad

Rahmani as the vocalist and lyricist. Behrouz left the band in July 2013, and the band released their last single, “Nāshenākhte,” with four members (ElectroqutE 2014). They are all in their mid to late twenties, have university degrees (in majors other than music), and have professional occupations unrelated to music. However, they are sometimes able to make money by composing and arranging for other bands. The band’s name was initially spelled as “Electrocute,” but when they found another band with the same name in Los Angeles, they changed the spelling to “ElectroqutE.”

Electorqute has 3,546 fans on their Facebook fan page (as of September 22,

2014), which is much fewer than other rock bands such as The Ways. Metal music has not received much success and fame in Iran compared to soft rock and pop rock. The band members believe it is because of people’s ignorance and inability to appreciate this music (Amir, pers. comm.). Their music is characterized by loud drums, heavy basses, loud electric guitar power chords, very fast and virtuosic electric guitar solos, and harsh, ear-piercing vocals. The electric guitar plays the key role in their music with its fast melodic work and virtuosic solos that move the song forward with a sense of anger and resentment.

In my interview with Amir, the band’s founder, and Mehrdad, vocalist and lyricist, on February 22, 2014 via Internet-based communication software Viber, significant issues were discussed among which stand out their insistence on not being labeled as underground musicians, criminals, and political activists. They emphasized that they do not have any songs with political lyrics. As was discussed in Chapter 3, they do not

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want to be associated with underground music because of its association with illegal activities and crime in Iran. Throughout the interview, I had the impression that they did not want to discuss details about their position as underground musicians. To them, metal is music, objection is an intrinsic aspect of it, and they are the creators; no need to label anything.

They explained how their surroundings inspire them and how their music is reflective of the situation under which they live and create music. For them, leaving the country would be a dead end because they believe that making meaningful and moving music to which their fans can relate would be impossible from outside Iran. Amir told me,

We are unhappy with many things. We have objections and concerns to voice, but we need to live in Iran to feel what other people feel. We think we can deliver our fans’ oppositions through our music, thus, we must be in touch with them. How can we express their concerns if we don’t know anything about their lives? If we leave Iran, we will forget our pain (Amir, pers. comm.).

Mehrdad added that,

I look around for inspiration for our songs. I have a song about my friend’s mother who is sick, and another one about war. My surrounding gives me ideas. I have a lot to say, a lot is happening in our society, I just want to make them heard through our music, so I need to live in this country” (Mehrdad, pers. comm.).

Like the majority of URM musicians, members of Electorqute received no formal musical training but have learned by imitating international metal bands such as

Metallica, Death, Dream Theater, Megadeath, and Iron Maiden as their role models. It is also important to notice that there are very few other metal bands in Iran; therefore, they are taking the first steps and creating a new genre through trial and error. They know a lot about metal music and other metal bands in Europe, America, and Asia. I asked

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Mehrdad how he had learned and developed his own vocal style, which is very harsh and ear-piercing, and he explained he had copied James Hatfield and had later added his own techniques and styles.

None of us has been trained musically. We have learned everything from imitating and copying famous metal singers and guitarists such as Rod Tyler and James Hetfield. All Iranian rockers have learned through imitation. We watched the videos and listened to the tapes we got in black market thousand and thousand times (Mehrdad, pers. comm.).

ElectroqutE is concerned about war, poverty, youth sufferings in Iran, drug addiction, and prostitution. Their music is loud and piercing, lyrics are poetic and sometimes overtly rebellious, and the video clips are professionally made but based on what they have noticed in their real lives. For this study I have chosen two of their songs

(“Khākestari” and “Mohreh”) that explicitly express their oppositions and objections via aural, lyrical, and visual aspects.

“Khākestari” (gray)

“Khākestari” is ElectroqutE’s most famous song and is the third song on their untitled album. Its moving lyrics, overall aural aspect characterized by fast and loud electric guitar, harsh vocals, and its video clip give it a prominent position in their repertoire. Its lyrics were written by Mehrdad and the music was composed by Amir, while the arrangement was done collectively as a band. The song begins with an instrumental introduction highlighting fast repetitive motives played on the electric guitar.

The verses are strophic, while the refrain employs a different melody. The song has a dense texture with the drums emphasizing the hi-hat and the electric guitar playing ostinatos and power chords. There is a long virtuosic electric guitar solo before the third verse which has a transitional function between the refrain and the following verse. The vocalist articulates the words with loud shouts, and he gets louder on the refrain. He

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intensifies key words of the lyrics with loud articulations in order to highlight their meanings.

Khākestari’s lyrics are based on the story of a young woman’s life in modern-day

Iran. Mehrdad observed the hardships a woman has to deal with in Iran’s patriarchal society and aimed at attracting attention to issues such as sexual harassments, compulsory wearing of the hijab, and other social and legal inequalities females face in everyday life in Iran (Table 4-3).

The lyrics are organized into two verses, chorus, verse, and chorus. The first verse describes the life of a lonely woman who does not feel secure about the future.

The second verse gives more details about her life that is filled with solitude, insecurity, melancholy, and disappointment. Gray is the color of depression in Iranian culture, and the phrase “her words are gray” refers to her despair. Loneliness is then reinforced by saying that she goes home at nights and sings the death lullaby to herself. Death lullaby here is a reference to her intentions of committing suicide, as the action in the video clip also implies. Lunatic and scarecrow are both words associated with fear, trauma, loneliness, and sorrow in Iran. She has no dreams, no desires; she is a lifeless scarecrow. “Her heart turned as red as blood by the passage of time” shows how the passage of time deteriorates her life and how she has no hope for a better future.

The refrain then intensifies the imagery through words. She is not a human; she only looks like one. Described as “made of stone” can have two interpretations: she is as strong as stone and tolerates the hardships with no emotional breakdown, and/or, she is heartless. Both are possible meanings of “being made of stone” in Iran’s culture and both make sense in the context of the song. Life’s sufferings have transformed her

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to a stone statue that can bear everything and keep silent just like a piece of stone. In

“Death to this nasty game,” nasty game is a reference to life. She is in constant battle with life and its troubles. There is no way to escape this destiny.

In the third verse, the listener learns more about her life. She has children whom she had not seen and now she misses them, just as she misses herself. In Iran, when a couple is separated, the father has rights to the children’s custody and the mother is allowed to see them only by court order. This is perhaps why she misses her children.

The verse ends with two rhetorical questions “Why is she bound to such horrible fate? Is she a human or a dry desert?” Dry desert refers to her hopeless and unhappy life.

Through Khākestari’s text, ElectroqutE castigate the injustice and inequalities females encounter in Iranian society. “Khākestari” mirrors the anxiety, sorrow, uncertainty, and depression associated with modern life in urban areas in Iran, particularly for women. As a consequence of modernity and urbanization, more and more young people, especially females, move out of their parents’ homes in the hope of more freedom and independence. However, the society does not approve of women, whether divorced or single, living on their own and without parents or their husbands.

Therefore, their independent lives in urban areas, particularly in Tehran, bring them many difficulties including sexual insecurity and financial problems. Some of

ElectroqutE’s fans compare this song and its lyrics to “Turn the Page” by Metallica and consider it an Iranian equivalent to the song modified by Iranian culture and socio- cultural situation of the society (ElectroqutE Facebook Page 2010).

This song’s video clip, made by Amir’s wife, plays an influential role in delivering the song’s lyrical content. It was posted on YouTube on June 14, 2011 and has the total

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of 2,670 views as of September 22, 2014. Asieh, the director, has closely observed life of a young modern Iranian female and portrayed many details to provide as real an image as possible. The director avoids depicting the actress clearly and when her face is shown in a scene, the camera moves very fast and creates a blurry image of her face.

The focus of the camera remains on her eyes, hands and feet, perhaps in an attempt to avoid possible authorities’ threats. Mandatory hijab, which has become a source of resentment and objection among modern Iranian women particularly in recent years, is highlighted at the very beginning of the video clip when the woman begins her day by wearing a scarf. It is important to notice that this band has chosen to show the actress wearing hijab, although they were not forced to do so by government authorities.

Khākestari’s video clip is the most favored clip one among the band’s fans. In an online poll on their Facebook fan page, they asked their fans to vote for their best video clip and this video ranked as the best. Fans comments show they loved the story depicted in the video, the musicians’ acts, and actress’s perfect job in conveying the emotions. Figure 4-3 shows the online poll on their Facebook page. “Khākestari,” in general, is a reflection of females’ lives that are filled with apprehension, depression and insecurity in hectic and crowded metropolises in contemporary Iran, and the band has aimed at reacting to these issues through aural, visual, and textual aspects of this song.

“Mohreh” (chess piece/ game counter)

“Mohreh” is another song by ElectroqutE, it was released as a single in 2012.

This song is also one of their most famous songs. Similar to “Khākestari,” this song has fast virtuosic electric guitar solos which are accompanied by fast riffs on the bass guitar and rapid and dense rhythmic figures on the drums. Vocal growls and shouts are made throughout the song, and at times the vocalist sings more harshly to emphasize phrases

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such as “if only there was an escape way.” Aurally and textually the song has a very angry tone.

The lyrical content addresses war and human sufferings as its consequence

(Table 4-4). As was mentioned in Chapter 3, URM musicians and the majority of their target audience were born during or after Iran-Iraq war and hence, they have experienced war’s destructive impacts on the society. During Iran-Iraq a great number of Iranian fighters were killed and those who survived suffer from the chemical weapons they were exposed to. Apart from their permanent injuries, a majority of these survivors suffers from mental illnesses caused by harsh living conditions and exposures to explosion blasts. The song “Mohreh” is dedicated to these survivors and tells the story of their lives while at the same time expresses hatred and condemnation of war.

The song can be divided to three sections; three different verses based on the same melodic and harmonic patterns. There is no refrain except for the sentence “The earth stinks and we pretend we are blind,” which is repeated three times, but is not long enough to form a typical chorus. The simple and un-poetic language of the text makes it easier to understand, in contrast to “Tehran” by The Ways. Instead of criticizing the powers initiating wars, the song criticizes the humans for pretending to be blind and not seeing the devastating consequences of battles. “The earth stinks, we pretend we are blind” attacks “US” as the humans who remain silent to the violence and injustice. The lyricist used “US” to relate himself to the audience and avoids putting the blame on others. He later asks the humans to remove their eye masks to see the world and its ugly side.

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In the second verse, the hopelessness about bringing any changes to the world is expressed in different statements such as “Humans’ destiny has been written with war since the beginning,” and “Friendship and peace are only mirages, If only there was an escape way.” The phrase “If only there was an escape way” was used in the band’s song “Khākestari” as well. Apparently, being hopeless about a better future is one of the main issues this band deals with and keeps pointing at in different contexts.

The third verse, however, takes a different approach. “Us” changes to “You” and the listener is asked to get rid of wrong beliefs and live the life to the best. There is a clear paradox between what a human wants to do and what destiny brings him. The song addresses both and puts the listener in the dilemma of surrendering to or challenging their fate. Destiny and a fate from which the human cannot escape is another shared theme with “Khākestari.” Concern, or fear, of destiny is a significant issue for band members and they tend to achieve a textual cohesion between their songs by referring to it in different contexts.

This song’s video clip is also directed by Asieh. It was uploaded on Asieh’

YouTube channel on January 25, 2012 and has been viewed 4,704 (as of September

22, 2014). Band members are shown performing together in a dark place. The video begins with some paper on which words “army” and “military” are written in English. Two men are also present in the video clip one of whom is a war survivor. He has an air mask and is on a wheelchair. His pain is reflected by his facial expressions and body movements while breathing. The other man looks like an interrogator, sitting in a room, dealing with some paper, smoking and reading some documents. The video clip aims at reflecting the pains a war survivor experiences and the way his life is permanently under

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the influence of his participation in the war. The other depicted man is perhaps an embodiment of world powers, or any governments, who initiate wars and disrupt world peace.

Some YouTube viewers have left comments saying they loved the video. Others have criticized the singer for his “not very professional” vocal style, and that he cannot keep up with the instrumentalists’ techniques. The majority of commentators, however, has expressed their love for the song and has expressed their support for the band and for Persian metal music. This video ranked as fourth in band’s online poll, but Amir and

Mehrdad mentioned that they believe this video clip is more artistic and professional than the other ones (Amir and Mehrdad, pers. comm.).

Although metal music is still challenging the social, cultural, and musical norms of

Iranian society in an attempt to find its position in Iran’s music scene; it has developed and grown enormously in terms of consumers and creators. Amir and Mehrdad said they might not have many listeners, but they know what their audience enjoys listening to and they know how to satisfy their fans. They believe their confrontational and oppositional music will eventually find its place in URM because it is a very rich musical genre aurally and textually (Amir and Mehrdad, pers. comm.).Today, there are various metal bands in different cities in Iran. There are also famous metal bands such as

Master of Persia that continue their musical profession in Armenia and in other countries. Arasmes (in Mashhad), Azhirock (in Tehran), Aliaj (in Shiraz) are some of world-famous metal bands that are making their music as part of Iran’s underground scene.

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“Ghesse Zir Zamin” (Story of the Underground) by The Ways, Arad Aria, Erwin Khachikian, Arian Nayeinei, and Yas

The last case study is a song titled “Ghesse Zir Zamin” (Story of the

Underground), which is the result of a collaboration of different musicians. “Ghesse Zir

Zamin” is among the most significant representatives of URM considering three main reasons; 1) a group of famous underground musicians collaborated in this song; 2) the lyrical content; and 3) its distinctive sound. The song was written and produced as the soundtrack of Shahyar Kabiri’s documentary, Rock On. Not being able to secure an official permit for the documentary, Shahyar has not been able to officially release it in

Iran yet. The soundtrack, however, has achieved great success and fame among URM fans. Soon after the song was released it could be heard everywhere in passing cars on the streets, stores, cafes, and any place that targets youths primarily. “Ghesse Zir

Zamin” ranked as second in the Zir Zamin online music festival in 2010.9 This award led to higher publicity for the song, for the documentary and for the underground musicians.

Persian television channels, broadcasting from Europe and North America,10 played this song repeatedly, and led to its extreme fame among the Persian speaking audiences all around the world.

The musicians who collaborated in this project are active in varied genres and styles. Arad is an independent musician whose works can be categorized as pop and

9 Zir Zamin online music festival was held on Zirzamin.com and i7Radio.com websites. Fereidoun Tafreshi, the owner of Zirzamin.com, was the editor in chief. Organizers’’ main goals in i7Radio was to support the underground music and empower the musicians by providing them some space to distribute and introduce their works. Numerous independent underground musicians and bands took part in this music festival and 22 songs were selected as the bests, among which Ghesse Zir Zamin ranked as second. The award’s website page is unfortunately down and cannot be accessed.

10 Such as PMC. “Launched on the 9th of May 2003, PMC has the passion and vision necessary to give Iranian youth a new voice. PMC is at the forefront of Iranian media and continues to expand its boundaries in content as well as coverage. PMC has remained a cornerstone in Iranian entertainment media for close to a decade now” (PMC 2014).

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techno. Erwin is an Iranian-Armenian musician who lives in the U.S. and works with famous metal band System of a Down as the keyboard player. He is also a renowned composer and arranger. Yas is Iran’s most influential rapper, famous for his oppositional songs that address socio-political problems. Arian is the founder and lead vocalist of

Neek Ayeen metal band. After appearing in Bahman Ghobadi’s globally recognized movie No One Knows about Persian Cats, which is about Iran’s underground musicians’ lives and music, Arian and his band became very famous in Iran (No One Knows about

Persian Cats 2011).

The inclusion of various underground musicians with diverse musical interests and backgrounds as representatives of different genres is significant from three perspectives. First, these musicians share their marginalized positions as underground musicians and are united through constructing a communal identity that separates them from Los Angeles-based pop stars and authorized musicians in Iran. They have been suppressed and were pushed to the margins of Iran’s music industry. Accordingly, their collaboration as a team in such a project is a rebellious action that has led to more publicity for underground music as a large umbrella covering various genres.

Furthermore, “Ghesse Zir Zamin” gained a significant position in URM by voicing the concerns and emotions of different underground musicians whose only shared characteristic is their position in the society, not their stylistic, aesthetic, and musical values. Each singer has his own unique style through which he empowers himself, his band, and his fans. Besides, the number of consumers increased with the appearance of different genres’ representatives. The song does not belong specifically to metal heads, rap enthusiasts, or rock fans. It belongs to the youth who attempt to find their

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voices through music. It not only unites all underground musicians, but also all Iranian youth who identify themselves via underground music.

The presence of Erwin Khachikian, who does not belong to the URM category, in this song, was surprising and controversial. URM, being the territory of musicians living inside the country, does not typically include exile musicians. Shahyar Kabiri, the project’s producer and director, explained Erwin’s inclusion in a personal conversation:

I wanted to make a universal statement. I wanted the whole world to hear the sound of Iran’s underground musicians. Therefore, I asked Erwin to join us because he is a globally-renowned musician. We were hopeful that the song would attract more consumers and achieve more success and fame with the appearance of Erwin. System of a Down has a great number of fans in Iran and we were convinced that Erwin’s inclusion in the project would excite our audience. On the other hand, Erwin showed strong sympathy for underground musicians and considered his collaboration with the project as some kind of responsibility toward the improvement of Persian music (Shahyar Kabiri, pers. comm.).

Erwin is a representative of Western rock in a Persian URM song. His presence shows the support of exiled musicians for Iran’s underground musicians. It also helped the recognition and publicity of both the documentary and the song, as the producing team predicted.

“Ghesse Zir Zamin,” composed by Kaveh Afagh, is divided to two distinct rock and rap sections. However, and in spite of Yas’s influential appearance in this song, the audiences tend to recognize this song as a URM song rather than an underground rap song. Song’s instrumentation and arrangement, presence of significant rock singers

(Kaveh, Arian, and Erwin), and the visual aspects play an important role in the song’s categorization as a rock song.

“Ghesse Zir Zamin” is musically and textually organized in one verse, refrain, rap section, the second verse, refrain, and repetition of partially altered first verse. Its main

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melodic line, which is repeated in the refrains, is introduced by the violin (Figure 4-5).

Violin prelude’s harmonic progression is [G—F—Bb—C—F] and refrain’s chord cycle is

[Eb—Ab—Db—Cm—Fm]. Verses are strophic and share the harmonic progression

[G—F—Bb—C—F] (Example 4-6 for the melodic line). The song’s fast tempo, driven by electric guitar, bass, and drums, intensifies its oppositional lyrical content that is delivered through Kaveh and Arian’s shouts. Diverse vocal styles of different singers in this song give it a contrasting, yet energetic sense and prevent creating monotony or repetition; although the verses share the same melodic and harmonic features. Arian, for instance, makes use of his metal vocal techniques and shouts with his harsh voice, while Erwin’s section is sung softly and is accompanied by the acoustic guitar that contrasts with song’s dense texture.

Song’s text, written by Kaveh Afagh (rock section) and Yas (rap section), plays the main role in the expression of resistance (Table 4-5). Ghesse Zir Zamin’s text addresses the hardships that underground musicians have to deal with in Iran. They face censorship and suppression from the authorities that lead to their marginalization.

Government’s disapproval of their musical career results in financial difficulties, uncertainty about future, and unstable social position for underground musicians. They react to all these issues through this song and take advantage of the lyrical contents to deliver their objections against inequalities and oppression.

In the first verse they aim at introducing themselves as underground musicians.

“For many years in the basements, we shouted our dreams despite all the fear. Our lives are filled with suspicion and distrust. We did everything to elevate ourselves and reach to the summit.” Underground music emerged in late 1990s in Iran, and

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underground musicians have been active in the basements (margins) for more than two decades. They have been suppressed for many years and have not recognized as real artists and professional musicians. They fearlessly shouted their dreams from the basements. The word “Shout” is used to indicate their anger and power. Shout is powerful and loud and is not out of misery and sorrow. Underground musicians do not consider themselves as inferiors in spite of the government’s efforts to suppress and undervalue them.

The chorus reflects the pain they have experienced and tolerated to achieve the position they have today. “In the cold and in the heat” refers to their hard living conditions. “We made a bridge from damp basements to the skies,” the most significant sentence in the chorus, mirrors two facts; underground musicians’ inferior position in the society by metaphorical reference to damp basements, and the bridge which is made as a result of their hard work and tolerance. The sky is another indicative of the empowerment and liberation of these musicians.

“Our hands are empty but we are proud” is a metaphorical reference to their financial difficulties. “Empty hands” refers to poverty, and the sentence indicates that they are not allowed to perform or sell their music, in contrast to rich pop stars and authorized musicians. “But we are proud” has a strong oppositional message. They are proud, despite being poor and marginalized, because they have not let the government tailor their music, emotions, and ideologies; again in contrast to authorized musicians.

They are proud because they have devoted their lives to their passion and have not let anything stop them from reaching the summit.

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The last sentence of the text has an important message as well. “There is no end to our misery, but our innocent hands will bring us the glory.” By “There is no end to our misery,” they clearly state that they are not hopeful for a better future for underground musicians. They are fully aware that the government, no matter who the president is going to be, will be hostile to music and musicians. “But our innocent hands will bring us the glory” refers to the fact that the only that has remained for them that can bring them prosperity and happiness is their ability of playing an instrument and performing their music. Their talents will elevate and emancipate them, despite all suppressions. Glory for them is the freedom of choice and music making. They use the word “innocent” to highlight the fact that they are not criminals, although the government considers them as such.

"Ghesse Zir Zamin” is a site of resistance, a medium through which underground musicians have elucidated their position in the society, their objections, and their emotions. Their music and their rapidly increasing fans liberate them from all the restrictions. Their powerful current position, thus, results from their own efforts and devotions. They have given voice to their audiences and deliver their rebellion through their music. They are no longer in the basement. Today they are nationally and globally recognized as professional musicians, and the government cannot silence them anymore. The message is clear; “Devote your life to you dreams, fight, and sacrifice, and you will get what you deserve.” The clarity of the message and the power of the song helped its popularity among the youth and gave it a significant position in the repertoire of URM.

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Hooman Ajdari

Hooman Ajdari is one of the most well-known and influential underground rockers in modern-day Iran. His country-rock, blues, and pop-rock songs, his simple yet meaningful lyrics, high quality and visually attractive video clips, and underground tours around the country have given him a prominent position in URM. He began his musical career at a very young age and was among very few students of famous pre-revolution rocker, Fereydoon Furughi. He moved to Malaysia in 2009 in order to get away from the restrictions and explore rock music in a more liberal environment. In his interview with

Manoto TV he explained:

I started learning the guitar by copying other guitarists. I grew up in Mashhad and we could watch Russian television channels. I was first introduced to rock and roll music through these channels that we received illegally. Later, I was very fortunate to become a student of Fereydoon Furughi who not only taught and encouraged me, but also took me with his tours in Kish Island. I worked with several bands in Iran, but later I chose to move to Malaysia to play my music with no suppression and control. There I learned that Iran’s rock music is way far from the world’s standards. In Iran, I was among the top musicians, in Malaysia I learned I have a lot to learn and experience (Hooman Ajdari 2011).

In 2012, Hooman moved back to Iran and started to teach, compose, and perform in Tehran. In his interview he explained he learned a lot in Malaysia and gained valuable experience, but he had to go back to his homeland, where he can “write songs in his mother tongue for his real fans” (ibid.). In his song “Mohājer” (The Immigrant), he shares his emotions and concerns as an immigrant: “I am an immigrant, and immigrant.

The earth is too small for me. I am a traveler, yes, a traveler, but I will never get home.”

Hooman’s songs are characterized with simplicity of harmonic progressions, melodies, arrangements and texts. He believes Iranian audiences are not prepared for the distorted electric guitar sounds yet. They need more exposures to rock music and a

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less hostile attitude toward URM in order to be able to appreciate rock music. Until then, he aims at producing simple, but meaningful and modern, songs that are appealing to larger crowds.

His songs, contrary to The Ways’ songs, are textually simple and are not poetic or metaphorical. He writes about youths’ issues and emotions in a plain language that is appealing to a larger audience. His music targets the mass, not a specific group of the elites who are interested in the expression of serious social and political issues through rock music. With the simplicity of lyrics, his music is appealing to the middle class who leaves the life of ordinary people. However, it is important to note that Hooman’s music, similar to other URM creators, is mainly disseminated through the Internet and is not available to all sectors of the society including the lower class. The lower class does not consume this music for two major reasons; 1) not having access to its performance and recordings, 2) not being able to relate to the social and cultural issues experienced by the urban middle class youth. Thus, it can be inferred that Hooman’s music targets a larger audience, but it is still restricted to modern youth in urban areas. In his song “I Am a Rocker,” he describes the lifestyle of an underground rocker: “I am a rocker; I will break the chains under my feet. I have a lot to say through these (musical) notes. I am a rocker. I enjoy my torn and tobacco-smelling clothes…. If you wanna be a rocker, you need to learn to be able to devote your life to your dreams.”

In another song, “I Am Mad,” he expresses his emotions sincerely and explicitly.

In his interview with Persian Deutsche Welle he explained:

I was angry when we came up with the song in our jam session. I was mad with the society, with the suppression, with my surroundings. My career, my musical life, and people around me put a lot of pressure on me.

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In this song, I just wanted to express my emotions (Persian Deutsche Welle 2013).

The song’s text begins with: “Don’t keep asking my name, because I don’t have an answer for that. Don’t ask me what I have to say because I have nothing to say.

Don’t ask me what the future is like; I have no future. Don’t walk on my nerve, I am mad.

My city’s sky is as ugly as I am; don’t ask me where my city is because I am mad.” He addresses the youth’s insecurity about future, social and cultural problems that enrages them, loneliness and financial difficulties: “Don’t ask me where I live, I have no home.

Don’t ask about my friends, I have none.”

“Polis Rāh” is one of his most famous songs among Iranian youth. It is organized into two verses, chorus, another verse, and the return of chorus. The song makes use of guitars, bass guitar, drums and shakers, and keyboard. The harmonic progression for the introductory and concluding instrumental sections is [F—C—Gm—Gm]. Verses are strophic and are based on [C—C—Gm—Gm—F—C—Gm—Gm] and the chorus chord cycle is [Dm—Dm—F—Bb—F—C—Gm—Gm].

Textually, the song is about the fear of being arrested at the police stop (Polis

Rāh) and its consequences (Table 4-6). As mentioned earlier, getting detained by the police for having an opposite-sex accompaniment, drinking alcoholic drinks, unusual

(westernized) appearance, attending mixed parties, and playing underground music is one of the major issues the young cosmopolitan and modern generation deals with in contemporary Iran.

In the first verse, the song reflects on the life of a couple, which tries to enjoy their lives but is confined with the social norms and legal regulations. “We were against the whole world” is an expression of resistance of two rebellious young people in

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Tehran. The fact that they did not feel well but kept listening to rock music is another defiance expression knowing that rock music is frowned upon by the government. There are many reasons for their possible arrest: they are a couple (possibly unmarried), driving alone in roads outside the city, they have done unacceptable things that caused mess, and they are listening to rock music. They hope they pass the police stop without getting arrested because they believe the jail is not where they should end up. They should be among other people, and if they face a little luck and do not get arrested, they will have heaven on earth (in Tehran).

Hooman conveys his emotions, fears, concerns, and dreams very easily through very simply words and easy-listening songs that appeal to many people of his age. He does not use a sophisticated language or very dense textures and distorted sounds. He wants to talk through his music and he wants to be heard as much as possible. In the past couple of years, after coming back to Iran, Hooman has had various underground concerts in cafes all around the country. He travels with his band and performs anywhere he is welcome. Using his Facebook account, he announces his future performances and asks his fans where they would like to see him in a gig. In our short conversation on Facebook, he explained how he enjoys being heard by his peers and using his music to sound their objections and issues. To him, being an underground musician is a valuable thing as he can say what he has to say with no restriction and censorship. He cannot make a living by his music, but he can sincerely express his thoughts (Hooman Ajdari, pers. comm.).

Conclusion

In this Chapter, I described URM as a medium for the expression of resistance among contemporary Iranian youth. I attempted to show what its main confrontational

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ideas are and how they are delivered through URM. Through the examination of a sample of URM hits as case studies, I investigated the lyrical contents, visual and aural aspects of these songs in current cultural, social, and political contexts. Analysis of the songs shows how URM has developed as a youth musical idiom through which their issues are expressed and their objections against them are conveyed. Iranian youth have a variety of vehicles to deliver their oppositional and rebellious opinions regarding different problems they face in today’s Iran; however, URM serves as one of their most applicable means of expression because of its pervasiveness, social and mobile nature of music, and its inherent rebellion. URM, thus, is not merely a musical genre that appeals to the youth because of its aural aspects or associated fashion and lifestyle.

The songs have meaningful, mostly critical and confrontational, contents that influence their audiences and reflect of Iran’s most significant current issues.

URM songs empower modern, urban, and increasingly cosmopolitan, Iranian youth, both musicians and their fans, and help them create a shared identity that separates them from their parents. Having been shaped and perceived as a site of resistance, URM enables the youth to trespass the boundaries imposed to them by the government, their society, environment, or even their nationality. Rock music belongs to the West, but Iranian youth aim at incorporating various aspects of their own identity and nationality into it. Iran’s young generating is increasingly globalized and is no more confined within the national borders, although the government takes drastic measures to hinder this process of globalization. As Daniel Noveck points out in his article

“Beautiful Blue: Rarámuri Violin Music in a Cross-Border Space” in Music and

Globalization: Critical Encounters, a musical instrument (violin in case of Rarámuri

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community, electric guitar in case of URM) is used to claim powers, to produce local space, and to empower the musicians (2012:108). Similarly, the electric guitar enables

URM musicians to cross borders. By incorporating a Western instrument, which is far removed from their national musical heritage, in their musical idiom, they 1) claim the global power and cross the dichotomy of north-south; 2) react against the authorities who fight westernization; and 3) create a cosmopolitan global identity in common with the youth around the world.

In Chapter 5, the conclusion, I summarize significant points scattered throughout different Chapters from the birth of early rock to the emergence of URM and to position in modern-day Iranian society. I use my case studies as evidence for my main hypothesis that is “URM has empowered the Iranian youth and is shaped as a site of resistance.” I put the puzzle pieces together and explain how the historical and political changes inside Iran have impacted the music scene and resulted in the emergence of

URM. I also provide a comprehensive, concluding, overview of the position, function and role of URM as a defiant and rebellious youth musical idiom in modern-day Iran.

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Figure 4-1. Graffiti by Black Hand depicting a female football fan holding up washing detergent instead of a trophy, wearing washing gloves and Iran’s national football team shirt (Dehghan 2014).

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Example 4-1. “Shahre Man Koo?” Verses 1 and 2 Vocal Melody.

Example 4-2. “Shahre Man Koo?” Verse 3 Vocal Melody.

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Table 4-1. “Shahre Man Koo?” Lyrics by Kaveh Afagh and Iman Mohammadi, Composed by Kaveh Afagh, Arranged by The Ways. Lyrics in English Lyrics in Farsi Verse 1: بین سیم های سیاه،زیر آوار و صدا، بارش خاکسترا، دریای Among black cables, under building debris خون زیر پا، and noise, rain of ash and feet covered in a blood flood کی می تونه که بگه، اینجا روزی شهر من بود؟ ?Who can claim this was once my city لب بیجون پسر، شعر پُر خون پدر، Son’s lifeless lip, father’s blood-covered poem, آویز زن های شهر، پوکه و باروت و درد، ,city women’s anklets are made of bullets gunpowder, and pain کی میتونه که بگه ،اینجا روزی شهر من بود؟ ?Who can claim this was once my city

Verse 2: خونه و سقف کجاست، Where is home and where is the ceiling کنج و ایوونش کو؟ shelter)? Where are balconies and) arches? میدون شهر کجاست ، برج و تندیسش کو؟ Where is the city’s main square? Where are the statues? تقدیر مرگ این بود، دست بی شرم بال بود. This is the death fate, the shameless hand of disaster

Verse 3: سینما رویال کجاست؟ پپسی سردش کو؟ Where is Royal Cinema? Where is the cold Pepsi? کوچه خاطره هام ، بوسه گرمت کو؟ ?Alley of my memories, your warm kiss شهر من مرده دیگه، ای خدا ! شهر من کو؟ My city is dead, Oh God! Where is my city?

Verse 4: بگو ای ابر سپید! روی ماه رسوا شه! The white cloud, you tell me the truth Denounce the moon. توی بدر کاملش ، فال مرگ پیدا شه! So that its full face reflects the death prophesy. طالع نحس این بود، فصل تاراج زمین بود... This was the omen, time of earth’s pillage

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Example 4-3. “Tehran” Vocal Melody Line.

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Table 4-2. “Tehran” by the Ways Band, Lyrics and Music by Kaveh Afagh, Arrangement by the Ways. Lyrics in English Lyrics in Farsi Verse 1: از تره بار تجریش، تا شهرنوی گمرک From Tajrish square (Uptown Tehran) to Shahre No in Gomrok (ghettos in Tehran) بَـ ِر هر بلوار، یا سر هر پیچ On every corner, and by every street هستند مردایی، تشنه واسه کار There are men, looking for jobs درگیر فرزند، بابا نون شب بیار ”.With children asking “Dad bring us food

ازسر پیچ شمرون، تا پای برج شهیـاد، From Shemroon (Uptown Tehran) to Shahyād square ( A central place in Tehran) بیــداد تو این شهر، فقط بوی گند میــاد ، Injustice is spread, this city stinks هستــند زنایی، درگیر احساس ، There are selfless women, who love their families unconditionally اما گـشنن شکم ها، ماما امشب کـجاس؟ ”?But they are hungry. “Where is mom tonight

Bridge: نشـو حـیرون مرد من، کارو بسپار به تنـم Don’t panic my man, let my body take care of this نون خونه پنهـونه، زیر دکــمه ی پــیرهنم Our bread is hidden here under my dress’s button الالیی کن مرد من، شبُ بنداز رو تنـم Sing the lullaby my man, let the night cover my body نون امشب پنهـونه، زیر چین چین ِ دامنم Our bread is hidden here, under my skirt

Chorus: من خسته، زن خسته Man is tired, woman is tired او خسته، چون تهران خسته He is tired because Tehran is tired مرد خسته، زن خسته ,Man is tired, woman is tired تن خسته، چون تهران خسته .The body is tired because Tehran is tired

Verse 2: از تره بار تجریش، تا شهرنو و گمرک ، From Tajrish square (Uptown Tehran) to Shahre No in Gomrok (ghettos in Tehran) بَر هر بلوار، یا َسر هر پیچ؛ On every corner, and by every street

هستنــد زنایی، درگیر احساس There are selfless women, who love their families unconditionally اما گشنن شکم ها، ماما امشب کجاس؟؟ (But, stomachs are empty (children are hungry

ازسر پیچ شمرون، تا پای برج شهیاد From Shemroon (Uptown Tehran) to Shahyād square ( A central place in Tehran) بیداد تو این شهر، فقط بوی گند میاد Injustice is spread, this city stinks Chorus: من خسته، زن خسته I am tired, woman is tired

تن خسته، چون تهران خسته Body is tired because Tehran is tired

مرد خسته، زن خسته ,Man is tired, woman is tired

ما خسته، چون تهران خسته .The body is tired because Tehran is tired

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Example 4-4. “Tehran” Backing Vocal Melody Line.

Figure 4-2. Screenshot from YouTube, Tehran by The Ways (The Ways Tehran 2009).

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Table 4-3. “Khākestari” Lyrics by Mehrdad, Music by ElectroqutE Lyrics in English Lyrics in Farsi یه صبح بی رنگ، یه زن تنهاست :Verse 1 روز و شب دائم ، تو فکر فرداست A gloomy day, a lonely woman دوباره بیدار شده کنار غم هاش who), worries about tomorrow all nights) خاکستری گرفته رنگ حرفاش .and days Woke up again, near her grieves Her words are gray شب می آد خونه مثل یک دیوونه :Verse 2 الالیی مرگ رو با خودش می خونه At night, returns home like a lunatic مثل یک مترسک بی روح و بی جون Sings the death’s lullaby to herself از صدای زمان دلش شده همرنگه خون Soulless and lifeless as a scarecrow Her heart turned as red as blood by the passage of time Chorus: یه آدم نما، از جنس سنگ A human-looking statue made of stone یه زندگی، شبیه جنگ A life like a battle راه فرار رو ندیده کسی No one has seen the escape way لعنت به این بازی کثیف Death to this nasty games Verse 3: Worrying about her children has locked فکر بچه هاش مثل زنجیر دورش her up by a chain, today she missed امروز دل تنگ شده ، حتی برای خودش everyone, even herself چرا سرنوشت بهش کرده پشت ?Why is she bound to a bad destiny این زنه آدمه یا بیابونه خشک؟ ?Is she a woman or a dry desert (Chorus)

Figure 4-3. Online Poll on ElectroqutE’s Facebook Fan Page (ElectroqutE Facebook Page 2014).

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Table 4-4. “Mohreh,” Lyrics by Mehrdad, Music by ElectroqutE. Lyrics in English Lyrics in Farsi Verse 1: بوی گند گرفته زمین، خودمونو به کوری زدیم .The earth stinks and we pretend we don’t notice برامون عادیه خبر کشتن ادم ها People’s deaths news does not shock us تا امروز کافیه از بین بردن باورها ,anymore پر کرده همه جهان رو جنگ و ادم کشی .It’s enough of killing the beliefs War and homicide has spread all around the world, طمع جای رحم رو گرفته ، ,Greed has replaced mercy ما بازم سر خوشیم We are still ignorantly happy Verse 2: بوی گند گرفته زمین، خودمونو به کوری زدیم The earth stinks and we pretend we are blind بکنیم چشم بندارو شاید درست ببینیم Let’s take off our masks, we might see everything clearly then. همه چی یه بازیه و ما هم مهره روی زمینیم It’s all a game and we are just the game pieces از سال ها قبل نوشته است سرنوشت ادم ها و جنگ Humans’ destiny has been written with war since the beginning اینجا همگی ناخواسته درگیر ماجرا شدن Here everyone is unwillingly involved in the game. چاره نداره این حال خراب، There’s no cure for this terrible feeling and the نداره دنیا اروم و قرار .world is not going to be peaceful صلح و دوستی تا ابد سرابه Friendship and peace are only mirages کاش این جا بود یک جای فرار If only there was an escape way Verse 3: بوی گند گرفته زمین، خودمونو به کوری زدیم The earth stinks, we pretend we are blind دنیا یه بوم سفیده و تو یه نقاشی Your life is a white canvas and you are the painter. نقش بزن طوری که از این حصار رها شی Paint in a way that frees you from this restrictions بیرون بریز عقاید اشتباهی که داشتی Get rid of your wrong conceptions حقیقت رو درک کن ، وقتشه بیدار شی See the truth, it’s time to wake up

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Example 4-5. “Ghesse Zir Zamin” introductory melody played by violin.

Example 4-6. “Ghesse Zir Zamin” Verses’ Melody.

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Table 4-5. “Ghesse Zir Zamin” Lyrics by Kaveh Afagh and Yas, Music by The Ways Lyrics in English Lyrics in Farsi ROCK SECTION: Verse 1 سالیان سال توی زیر زمین ها ,For many years in the basements ما با ترس و لرز واسه ارزوها فریاد زدیم .We shouted our dreams despite all the fear روزگار ما همه شک و تردید .Our lives are filled with suspicion and distrust هی دویدیم هی زدیم تا به اوج رسیدیم We did everything to elevate ourselves and reach to the summit

Refrain: از تموم دردا توی سرما و گرما ,Despite all the pain, in the cold and in the heat پلی ساختیم ما از نمه زیرزمین ها تا اسمون ها We made a bridge from damp basements to the skies دستای ما خالی مغرور اما .Our hands are empty but we are proud فدا کردیم ما خواب شبارو واسه ارزوها .We devoted our nights’ sleep to our dreams

RAP SECTION: در نزن که بازه در Don’t knock, the door is open واسه حرفای تازه تر To say new things سواره کلمات بشیم کم کم Let’s ride the words اگه پایه ای بشین ترکم Hop on if you are ready دربست بریم به مرکزو We’ll go directly to the center مرحم بدیم به هر زخم و We’ll cover the wounds هر کس که سیره از درد If you are fed up with all the pain و پس حرکت به زیر هم کف Let’s go to the basements چپ و راست به هر در زدیم We did everything in our power سبک رپ و راک و از دست ندیم Not to lose rap and rock مثل برق و باد و از هر طریق We did everything درد و رنج مارو هرکس ندید And no one saw our pain and misery میدونی که کسی پشت ما نیست You know no one supports us واسه دستگیریم این مژدگانیست There is a prize for my arrest پس میشه رشد ما ریسک So our progress is risky ولی اینا مانع رشد ما نیست But this does not stop us مغزم سراسر تو فکر نو My head is full of new ideas نبضم هماهنگ با مترونوم My heartbeat matches the metronome تو میبینی دستم میکروفون و You see the microphone in my hand خوب میخونم این و رو ریتم تند و I sing on fast beats هوو اینه سالحه دستم Ho, this is my weapon و میاد از سینه صدای خستم And my weary voice comes from my heart وقتشه همه با هم یکی بشیم It’s the time to unite حرف قلب و راحت بگیم And speak our minds clearly

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Table 4-5. Continued Lyrics in English Lyrics in Farsi Verse 2: زندگیمون و روی ساز میرقصونیم We dance our lives on our instruments به هر دلیل به هر کجا که میخوایم میبریم We take it (our life) every where پای به پای ترس بین راه اسمون Fearful on our way to the sky به هر دلیل به هر کجا که بگی سر زدیم We have looked everywhere

Refrain: از تموم دردا توی سرما و گرما ,From all the pain, in the cold and in the hot پلی ساختیم ما از نمه زیرزمین ها تا اسمون ها We made a bridge from the basements damp to the skies دستای ما خالی مغرور اما Our hands are empty but we are proud فدا کردیم ما خواب شبارو واسه ارزوها We devoted our nights’ sleep to our dreams

Verse 3: (Partially altered verse 1) سالیان سال توی زیر زمین ها For many years in the basements با ترس و لرز واسه ارزوها فریاد زدیم ما We shouted our dreams despite all the fear زندگیمون و روی ساز میرقصونیم We dance our lives on our instruments به هر دلیل به هر کجا که میخوایم میبریم We take it (our life) everywhere قصه های دردهای ما پایانی نداره There is no end to our misery اما پاکی دستهای ماست که اوج و میاره But our innocent hands will bring us the glory

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Table 4-6. “Polis Rāh” Lyrics and Music by Hooman Ajdari. Lyrics in English Lyrics in Farsi Verse 1: تو پیچ و خم تنگ جاده ,We were driving in curvy narrow roads با دو تا پلک افتاده With sleepy eyes من و تو بودیم و دنیا ضد ما It was you and I, and the whole world تهرونو به هم ریختیمو against us We painted the Tehran red, یه افتضاح حسابی Made a real mess. آره ما بودیم ما بودیم ما دو تا ,Yes, it was us, us, you and I Verse 2: حالمون به هم ریخته بود ,We felt terrible اما بازم راک گوش کردیم But we still listened to rock تموم طول روز توی راه All day long, driving all the way یه جای امن یه جای دور A safe place, a far place میتونه آخرش باشه Can be the end for us

اگه بگذریم از پلیس راه :Chorus هوا سرده هر دو خسته (If we pass the police stop (x3 Verse 3: It’s cold and were are both tired دو تا پلک خسته بسته Heavy eyelids are closed نخوابیدیم یه چن روزه تا حاال We haven’t slept for several days شاید تا دردسره بعدی ,Maybe until the next trouble بریم گم و گور بشیم We can go lose yourself somewhere تا یه جنگ دیگه با دنیا .Maybe till another fight against the world اگه بهشت حتا باشه ,Even if we find the heaven جای من و تو نیس اونجا .It won’t be the right place for you and I جا ما همینجاس الی آدما We should be here, among all these people. اگه یه کم شانس بیاریم ,If we are a little lucky برنده ایم تو این بازی We can win this game Chorus: If we pass the police stop (x6) اگه بگذریم از پلیس راه

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CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION

Exploring the historical background and context of rock music in Iran and investigating the socio-political changes that led to the birth and development of URM as a youth subversive musical idiom in the late 1990s sheds light on the role and function of URM in modern Iranian society. Rock music entered Iran’s music scene in a transitional period from tradition to modernity in the late 1960s. It was initially an imitated musical genre that was an embodiment of Westernization and modernization. It appealed and belonged to the upper-class, urban youth and was restricted to covering the Western rock hits of the time. With the historical and political changes inside the country after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, rock music went through a period of silence, reappearance, transformation, and development. It expanded in the number of creators and consumers as well as in styles, contents and forms.

Today, URM is a defiant musical genre that belongs to the urban, middle class, educated, and increasingly globalized Iranian youth who take advantage of technological advancements to bridge their culture to the global youth culture. Although the dissemination of URM through the Internet has restricted its accessibility to lower and rural classes, it is widely spread in urban areas among the middle class youth.

According to Iran’s Sociology Association (ISA 2014), the middle class comprises 60 percent of Iran’s population. Therefore, the majority of Iranian youth are able to access

URM and other cultural products that target the modern, urban, and middle class youth.

Furthermore, modern young Iranians, comprising over 60 percent of Iran’s total population, are able to comprehend and communicate in English and are highly computer-literate. They are connected to the world via the Internet, despite state’s

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control. They cross the cultural, national, and geo-political boarders that separate them from the global youth and utilize various vehicles, such as URM, to express their emotions, dreams, concerns, and life views. Censorship of the media and press can no longer confine them.

Young Iranians use URM as a medium for expression of their objections and dissatisfactions with the government’s actions and policies as well as socio-cultural norms and regulations that plague the Iranian society and negatively impact the lives of youths. URM has enabled them to share their ideas and emotions with their peers and construct a communal identity that separates them from other people with different socio-cultural, political, or religious values. Underground musicians are the active agents in voicing their consumers’ opinions, and consumers actively engage with the music as means of self-expression. Therefore, understanding URM as a site for youth resistance can provide a better overall image of modern-day Iran.

Furthermore, unlike the youth in the 60s, they distinguish westoxication (an intoxicated love of the west) from westernization. They embrace modernity and westernization, but are very well aware of their national and historical heritage and reject vacuous imitations of the West. They are involved in a mutual relationship with the West through science, arts, and politics. URM, thus, is an amalgamation of Western musical elements and Iranian social, cultural, and artistic values. URM creators and consumers are Iranian, and its texts are in Persian. URM is a Western-impacted musical genre that is tailored for and by Iranian youth at the end. Contrary to the government’s belief that URM is an embodiment of Westoxication, URM fans and

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musicians have proved that URM is a glocalized musical idiom that bridges them to the global culture.

For rock musicians of the late 1960s, modernization and Westernization were synonymous. In contrast to Nettl’s belief that modernization is used to enhance, yet preserve, the local musics in the increasingly globalized and Westernized nations of the global South (Nettl 1978: 432-433), Iranian musicians of the ‘60s aimed at using

Western musical influences to produce something as Western as possible in order to cross their physical and cultural borders. To them, Westernization meant performing

Western hits of the time with no alteration. Preserving the local music and national heritage was not as important to them as to sound “global”, “modern,” and “Western.”

As Nettl mentions in “Persian Popular Music in 1969,” Iranians did not establish a single, all Western music system. They kept both systems active and in contact with each other and created a variety of hybrid musics on the spectrum of purely Western and purely Persian (1972: 220). Early rock music in Iran was on the far end of purely

Western with exact covering of Western rock hits of the time with no innovation or

“glocalization.” Today’s URM, however, is somewhere between the two. In fact, as a glocalized musical idiom, URM has given voice to local issues through the Western template of rock music. URM is not an entirely imitated musical style with no creativity or recontexualization of Western, imported forms. URM bands use the Western model of rock music in order to elevate their music and musicians’ status not only in Iranian society but also all around the world. Western harmonies, instruments and arrangements are utilized to sonically represent the modern-day Iran. Through mixing

Persian and Middle Eastern melodies and vocal techniques with Western instruments

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and harmonies, URM has created, and is involved with, a dialogue between the East and the West. Advancement of technologies has facilitated the distribution of this music as well and has aided underground musicians being heard across the geographical, cultural, and political borders.

URM musicians are increasingly globalized via the use of the Internet and contact with the Persian diaspora through satellite televisions. They aim at being heard universally and reaching out to the whole world beyond the local and national restrictions and such outreach has become a possibility for them mainly through the

Internet. By taking advantage of global communication technologies, Iran’s URM musicians in different parts of the country, and the world, collaborate to create and disseminate their music widely, although they may never have face-to-face interactions.

Globally renowned metal band “Arsames” from Mashhad, for instance, has been able to sell their music via the Internet all around the world, even though they can never sell their music inside the country (Arsames Facebook Page 2014). The Internet has, indeed, connected URM creators with the people not only outside their geographical borders, but also inside the country since they cannot perform, sell, and distribute their music in Iran. To musicians and audiences of URM, the Internet is universal space that connects them to the global youth culture and creates a translocal sphere through which they express their thoughts freely.

Therefore, it can be concluded that today’s URM is modernized, according to

Nettl’s concept of modernization, in a sense that it preserves local music, aesthetics, values, and social concerns (1978). But, it is also Westernized, or better to say globalized, in the sense that Western technologies and techniques are used to enhance

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the music and cross the borders. URM musicians re-contextualize global forms to change them according to local standards and that is an exact embodiment of what is termed as “glocalization.” Globalization, Westernization, and modernization are closely tied to each other in our modern world with complex political, cultural and financial interrelationships. It is no longer a matter of white or black as Nettl approached it initially. Global influences are inherently Western, as dominant cultural centers are in the West, and modern due to the dichotomies of north and south, developed and developing. A nation of the global south can react to global/ Western influences in many different ways from Westernization to glocalization and indigenization. While the processes are becoming more and more multifaceted, the study of such heterogeneous musics demands new theoretical approaches and methodological tools as well and that is precisely where the field is moving toward.

Through numerous hours of interviews and personal conversations, observations, musical and lyrical analysis, studies, and the examination of collected data, I found out that URM’s position among the modern Iranian youth is a lot more than a musical genre. It is a vehicle for expressing their own ideas and concerns. In other words, they do not play rock music because it is an avant-garde, Western musical genre that is exciting and different for them. They play rock because they have something to say through it. Admittedly, they enjoy the aural elements and the inherent rebellion of rock music. However, these are not the only appealing features to them because if that were the case, they would be simply covering the Western rock hits just in the same way as early Iranian rock bands of the 60s. They aim at utilizing Western rock music to their own benefit. In fact, in encounters between the local and the global, the local

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claims the global power for elevating their own community. Through incorporating their ideologies, beliefs and opinions into the Western template of rock music, they create a youth musical idiom to empower themselves in a society that imposes various restrictions to them and pushes them to the margins.

Nowadays, underground musicians take different measures to react to these socio-cultural and socio-political restrictions. While securing an official permit for musical activities inside Iran is still a musician’s major obstacle, underground musicians engage in various strategies to confront this obstacle. Some underground musicians and bands believe that President Hassan Rouhani’s government’s relaxation of regulations has created a more liberal situation compared to presidency of Mahmoud

Ahmadi Nejad. Therefore, they attempt to take advantage of such relaxation of rules and secure the official permit. They believe now it is a good time for moving forward and coming to an agreement with the governing powers, at least to a certain degree.

Securing a permit means performing live, selling the music, gaining more publicity, and more importantly meeting their fans and audiences in the real world after years and years of fearful underground gigs or virtual communications.

The other underground musicians, however, claim that they will never apply for a music permit because Ershād’s Councils are not qualified for assessing their music.

Besides, these underground musician state that they will never permit such councils to tailor their music aurally, visually, or textually. They face all the obstacles, but are convinced that surrendering to the government is not the solution to their problems.

They consider their music making as a more useful approach and are hopeful that their growth and development will eventually make the government concede to their needs

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and respect their music. Becoming officially permitted musicians, on the other hand, diminishes the level of intrinsic rebellion of their music. They are underground, rebellious musicians because their music is not approved by the government and that is what makes their music making an act of resistance. If they come to up to the surface and overground, they believe they will be part of the mainstream music market of which they are essentially critical.

The government is aware of these musicians’ beliefs as well. In fact, a significant reason for facilitating the process of issuing permits and approving more musicians is that the authorities have recently aimed at creating a counter-subversive movement. By authorizing rock musicians, they create a rival and a reaction to URM that is likely to develop faster and greater than URM. The government showed the exact reaction to

Los Angelesi pop music in late 1990s too. By authorizing a new generation of musicians active in popular music, the state gained control over the music market and created a powerful rival for Los Angelesi pop music. Consequently, Los Angelesi pop music lost its significance in Iran’s music scene as people were able to make a choice between new authorized pop and Los Angelesi pop.

As Laudan Nooshin argues in her book chapter “Subversion and

Countersubversion: Power, Control, and Meaning in the New Iranian Pop Music” in

Media, Culture and Society in Iran: Living with Globalization and the Islamic State,

Islamic authorities relaxation of rules against popular music led to decline of the subversive Los Angelesi pop and created a counter-subversive movement. For the same exact purpose, the new moderate government issues permits for rock songs in

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order to gain control over the music scene.1 Furthermore, it helps them promote their position in the global politics. At least, world media and human right campaigns cannot accuse them for suppression of musicians.

Permitted rock music, however, still faces certain restrictions. First of all, the

Council of Authorization of the lyrics does not approve oppositional and confrontational lyrical contents. Second, the musicians are not allowed to look Western (having long hair, torn clothes, accessories, hats, long un-Islamic beards, tattoos, and piercings are embodiments of Western rock in Iran). Third, they are not permitted to accompany their music with body movements and any kind of dance is forbidden during the concerts.

Fourth, use of loud distorted electric guitar sounds is prohibited. Fifth, women are not allowed to sing solo. It is important to notice that consumers are also aware of such constraints and do not favor permitted rock as much as URM.

Despite all restrictions and state’s hidden agendas in legalizing rock music, such relaxation of rules has positive future impacts. It will lead to decriminalization of rock music in the future, even though gradually and very slowly. Similar to popular music that was transformed from an absolutely forbidden musical genre to an acceptable yet controlled one, rock music, it is hoped, will change from an illegal, potentially destructive musical genre, to a tolerable, and optimistically favorable, genre. Although underground musicians and their audiences show varied reactions to state’s change of approach toward rock music, they all long for a better future for Iran’s music scene.

The future of URM is vague and unpredictable at this point of time. Rouhani’s government has provided a transitional situation in which musical activates are bound to

1 Reza Yazdani and Comment Band are among the rockers who have been able to secure official permit and have live performances in different cities.

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alter, hopefully for better. However, considering the fact that music’s place is not clear in

Islam and is open to interpretation, its future position in Iran is dependent on the views and ideologies’ of next governments and presidents. Understanding the upcoming position of and function of rock music in Iran and anticipating the future of URM are important considerations for future research.

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Discography

Aghili, Shadmehr. 1997. Bahāre Man (My Spring).

______. 1998. Dahāti (The Villager).

______. 1998. Mosāfer (The Traveler).

Ajdari, Hooman. 2009. “Man Ye Rockeram” (I Am a Rocker).

______. 2011. “Mohājer” (The Immigrant).

______. 2014. “Polis Rāh” (The Police Stop).

Arad Aria, Erwin Khachikian, The Ways, Yas, Neek Ayeen. 2011. “Ghesse Zir Zamin” (The Story of the Underground).

Black Cats. 2003. “Pop Father of Persia.” Pop Father. Caltex Records.

DJ Maryam. 2000s. “Ye Ye Ye.”

ElectroqutE. 2011. “Khākestari” (Gray).

______. 2012. “Mohreh” (The Chess Piece/ The Counter).

Hamedi, Ebrahim. 1988. “Khalije Fars” (The Persian Gulf).

Mehrad, Farhad. 1976. “Booye Eidi” (Smell of the New).

______. 1975. “Gonjeshkak Ashimashi” (Ashimashi The Little Sparrow). Jome’e (Friday).

______. 1974. “Hafteh Khākestari” (The Gray Week).

______. 1971. “Kooche Banafsheha” (Violas’ Immigration).

______. 1971. “Koodakaneh” (The Childhood).

______. 1970. “Marde Tanha” (The Lonely Man).

______. 1977. “Saghf” (The Roof)

The Ways. 2010. “Shahre Man Koo” (Where Is My City). Stress.

______. 2010. “Tehran.” Stress.

Yaghmaie, Kourosh. 1970s. “Dar Entehā” (At the End).

______. 1970s. “Ghad Boland” (Tall).

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______. 1974. “Gole Yakh” (The Frozen Flower/ Chimonanthus ). Caltex Records.

______. 1970s. “Key To Miāyee” (When Will You Come).

______. 1970s. “Khār” (Thorn).

______. 1970s. “Pāiez” (Autumn).

______. 1970s. “Reyhān” (Girls’ Name/ Basil).

______. 1996. Seeb Noghreyee (The Silver Apple). Arvin Records.

______. 1970s. “Shirin Joon” (Dear Shirin).

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Shabnam Goli holds a bachelor of arts in English language and literature from

Khayyam University of Mashhad, Iran (2008), and a master of music in ethnomusicology from University of Florida (2014). Her area of interest in the study of music includes politics and protest music, nationalism, identity, popular music, gender issues, globalization and socio-cultural movements. As a cellist, she is also interested in cello pedagogical research. She was awarded as an Outstanding International Student at the University of Florida for two consecutive years in 2013 and 2014. Shabnam is currently doing her Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at the University of Florida.

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