Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20 by guest on 26 September 2021 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE The Shiraz Arts Festival: Western
Avant-Garde Arts in 1970s Iran GLOBAL CROSSINGS ABSTRACT
Iran in the 1970s was host to an array of electronic music Robert Gluck and avant-garde arts. In the decade prior to the Islamic revolution, the Shiraz Arts Festival provided a showcase for composers, performers, dancers and theater directors from Iran and abroad, among them Iannis Xenakis, Peter uring the twilight years of Mohammed Reza The decision to establish a festi- Brook, John Cage, Gordon D Mumma, David Tudor, Karlheinz Shah Pahlavi’s reign in Iran, a panoply of avant-garde forms val that presented Western-oriented Stockhausen and Merce Cun- of expression complemented the rich, 2,500-year history of arts was fraught with potential con- ningham. A significant arts traditional Persian arts. Renowned musicians, dancers and flict. Iran boasted of openness to center, which was to include filmmakers from abroad performed alongside their Persian intellectual ideas and the social in- electronic music and recording peers at the annual international Shiraz Arts Festival. Elabo- tegration of women, but the state studios, was planned as an rate plans were developed for a significant arts center that was sharply curtailed internal political outgrowth of the festival. While the complex politics of the to include sound studios and work spaces for residencies. expression, unwittingly fostering Shah’s regime and the approach- Young Iranian composers and artists were inspired by the fes- the growth of a radical Islamic cler- ing revolution brought these tival to expand their horizons to integrate contemporary tech- ical opposition who would prove to developments to an end, a niques and aesthetics. Some subsequently traveled abroad for be offended by festival program- younger generation of artists continued the festival’s legacy. further study. Although the 1979 Islamic Revolution marked ming. The opulence of the court the end of institutions sustaining the avant-garde and schol- was on full display throughout the arships for international study, creative expression sparked by 11 years of events, highlighting the the festival has continued in cinema and other arts. economic distress of the general populace. Nonetheless, the creative activity featured at the fes- tival reflected the most forward-looking international efforts, FOUNDING OF THE SHIRAZ ARTS FESTIVAL presenting Iran to the world as pioneering and open. A central goal of Pahlavi rule throughout the 20th century was modernization and industrialization, while still maintaining independence from other nations, particularly Great Britain EXPERIENCES OF WESTERN and the Soviet Union [1]. Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi PERFORMERS AND ATTENDEES hoped to ground his independence and authority in three as- For visiting artists, the Shiraz Arts Festival offered a remark- sertions: secular rule, Pahlavi political hegemony and conti- able experience. Merce Cunningham Dance Company nuity with the ancient, pre-Islamic Persian Empire. In 1967, (MCDC) dancers Carolyn Brown and Valda Setterfield recall the Shah crowned himself Emperor and his wife Empress, their 1972 visit as a “unique . . . wonderful unforgettable ad- thereby securing her right of succession. The upcoming venture” [3] and as “heady and thrilling” [4]. Gordon Mumma 2,500th anniversary (1971) of the conquest of Babylonia by Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Persian empire, provided a rationale for an international cultural event at the ruins of Fig. 1. Empress Farah greets John Cage and Merce Cunningham Persepolis, the ancient pre-Islamic royal seat. at the 1972 festival. (Photo courtesy of Cunningham Dance The Shiraz Arts Festival began in 1967 as a showcase for the Foundation Archive) royal court, especially Empress Farah Diba, a former archi- tectural student, who convened each year’s events. Musician Gordon Mumma remembers her as “an extraordinary woman of considerable worldly knowledge” [2]. National Iranian Ra- dio and Television (NIRT), also founded in 1967, served as fes- tival sponsor. Sharazad (Afshar) Ghotbi, a violinist and wife of NIRT director Reza Ghotbi, was named musical director. Pro- gramming reflected Empress Farah’s Western-leaning, con- temporary tastes (Fig. 1).
Robert Gluck (educator), University at Albany, PAC 312, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12208, U.S.A. E-mail:
Article Frontispiece. Valda Setterfield of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in a 1968 performance of Rainforest with Andy Warhol–designed pillows. Rainforest, with the same pillows, was performed as part of Shiraz Event at the Shiraz Arts Festival in 1972. (Photo courtesy James Klosky)
©2007 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 40, No. 1, pp. 20–28, 2007 21
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20 by guest on 26 September 2021 calls it “one of the most extraordinary cul- “Persepolis was absolutely filled with sol- sented Nuits, a choral work dedicated tural experiences of my life.” Setterfield’s diers with rifles. They seemed to appear to political prisoners, some named and memories of Shiraz include: out of the woodwork at every corner. “thousands of forgotten ones whose There was a real sense of wariness and names are lost” [8], and in 1969 pre- drinking watermelon juice for breakfast, danger. You looked at something ex- sented the percussion work Persephassa, huge insects buzzing around and drown- GLOBAL CROSSINGS ing in the swimming pool, the heat of the traordinary, old and beautiful, and sud- commissioned by the festival and Office ground being too much to walk to the denly you would see the soldiers.” Merce de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française pool without shoes. The nearby market Cunningham discovered that pillows (ORTF). Persephassa links cross-cultural was wonderful, filled with the sound of used in the Persepolis performance legends of the Greek goddess Perseph- metal pots being beaten into shape and “were in a room full of machine guns” one. Xenakis’s third and final work for mysterious things to eat. When the sun went down, everything smelled like roses. [6]. the festival was the commissioned multi- media extravaganza Polytope de Persépolis, An elite audience converged on the which premiered at the Persepolis ruins festival. Mumma points out that “the cost PROGRAMMING on 26 August 1971. Xenakis describes the of admission was not only money, but also The Shiraz Arts Festival always included work as security clearance.” A 1976 column in traditional music from around the world. Tehran Journal mixed criticism and gos- The 1967–1970 programming included visual symbolism, parallel to and domi- sip: “the Empress [appeared] in a multi- Indian sitarist Ustad Vilayat Khan, Amer- nated by sound . . . correspond[ing] to a rock tablet on which hieroglyphic or colored velvet siren suit that quite ican violinist Yehudi Menuhin, numer- cuneiform messages are engraved. . . . outshone most of the ladies’ gowns” [5]. ous Persian classical musicians and artists, The history of Iran, fragment of the Brown recalls that the audience “ap- a Balinese gamelan ensemble, the Sen- world’s history, is thus elliptically and ab- peared far more interested in looking at egalese National Ballet and perform- stractly represented by means of clashes, explosions, continuities and under- the Queen and her entourage than at the ances of the Persian passion play ta’ziyeh ground currents of sound [8]. dancing,” but Mumma found the audi- (“mourning” or “consolation”) portray- ence to be serious and interested: “There ing the founding of Shi’a Islam [7]. Critic James Harley describes Polytope were none of the aggressive arguments Ta’ziyeh, banned under the Shah’s father, de Persépolis as “unrelenting in its density about ‘that isn’t music’ stuff that we often influenced avant-garde Western theatri- and continuously evolving architecture” encountered elsewhere.” cal directors Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski [9]. Security was tight, as Mumma notes: and Joseph Chaikin (who brought The Xenakis scholar Sharon Kanach re- “In Persepolis each of us was given a Open Theatre [Fig. 2]). Visiting dance constructs the scene as follows: ‘guide’ (read ‘guard’) dressed in a West- companies included Merce Cunningham ern suit with a tie and jacket. The pri- in 1972 and Maurice Bejart in 1976. The audience was placed in the ruins of mary jacket function was to conceal their The Western composer most closely Darius’s Palace and was able to move freely between the six listening stations weapons. . . . We traveled in Iranian mili- associated with the Shiraz Arts Festival placed within these ruins. Each station tary aircraft.” Setterfield remembers: was Iannis Xenakis, who in 1968 pre- had eight speakers, one for each track. . . . The one-hour spectacle began in total darkness with a “geological prelude” of Fig. 2. Performance of Joseph Chaikin’s Open Theater at the 1971 excerpts from Xenakis’s first electro- Shiraz Arts Festival. Still image taken from a Pars Video documentary. acoustic work, Diamorphoses (1957). Im- mediately afterwards, on the mountain facing the site, two gigantic bonfires are lit, projector lights sweep the night sky, and two red laser beams scan the ruins. Then, several groups of children appear carrying torches and proceed to climb to the summit, towards the bonfires, out- lining in scintillating light the mountain’s crest. . . . Suddenly, the groups of children disperse and climb down the mountain in constellation-like figures (Color Plate E) and finally congregate between the two tombs where their torches spell out in Persian “we bear the light of the earth,” a phrase by Xenakis. One last out- burst and the 150 torch-bearers run past the ravine and disappear through the crowd into the forest [10].
The new work faced mixed reactions. The Empress and NIRT liked it enough to offer Xenakis a further commission for the design of a proposed art center. How- ever, some Iranian critics, sensitive to the legacy of Western hegemony in Iran, as- sociated Greek composer Xenakis’s torch spectacle with the burning of Persepolis by Alexander the Great [11] or suggested that the symbolism could be interpreted as the actions of Nazi brownshirts [12].
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20 by guest on 26 September 2021 Xenakis (Fig. 3) responded that “fire tional Persian and South Indian music was helium-filled pillows designed by and light represented goodness and and contemporary Iranian theater and Andy Warhol (Article Frontispiece), teth- eternal life . . . using children today as film. Electrical power needed to be ered to the ancient pillars, as Mumma re- torch-bearers, representing the men and brought into Persepolis from outside, calls, to “keep them from floating away women of tomorrow, is a cry of hope for notes Mumma, “by truck and horse- from the performance.” Company ad-
the future” [13]. drawn wagons. I was told that much of ministrator Jean Rigg remembers that GLOBAL CROSSINGS The 1972 festival was a veritable Stock- that sound equipment was obtained on “The winds came up, and many simply hausen festival, the composer’s “high- loan from the Deutsche Rundfunk by the snapped their lines and floated off . . . the light of the year” [14], featuring three Iran government.” effect was great” [21]. “intuitive” compositions and Gruppen, Merce Cunningham Dance Company The musical concert included Carre, Stimmung, Gesang der Jünglinge, Tele- gave outdoor dance performances at Shi- Mumma’s Ambivex (“a composition for musik, Prozession, Kontakte, Spiral, several raz and Persepolis, plus a musical con- trumpet [or cornet] with live cybersonic Klavierstücke, Hymnen (Fig. 4) and Mikro- cert. The dance performances included modification”) and a simultaneous per- phonie I. MCDC dancer Brown describes two “Events,” composed of material se- formance of Cage’s Birdcage and Tudor’s Stockhausen’s appearance at the festi- lected from the company’s repertoire Monobird (Fig. 6) [22]. Birdcage (1972) valas like that of a “guru . . . walking the “to allow for, not so much an evening is a “complex, exuberant, and joyful” col- streets of Shiraz white robed.” The festi- of dances, as the experience of dance” lage composed from sounds of birds, val closed with an outdoors performance [17]. The choreography was unrelated to “Cage singing his ‘Mureau’ and . . . ambi- of Sternklang, in which the music, which included John Cage’s ent sounds” [23]. one-minute stories making up Indeter- a seething mass of about eight thousand minacy [18] and circa-1930s Argentine poured up the star-shaped converging tangos. An “official” festival reviewer IMPACT ON YOUNG paths . . . the spectators squashed together COMPOSERS AND ARTISTS on the pathways, besieging the perform- wrote: “Tuesday night, alas, was un- ers . . . [some] clambered up the loud- intense, overlong, extended, and—ex- The festivals proved influential on the ris- speaker scaffolding and were hauled cept for such ecstatic moments—tedious ing generation of Iranian artists and com- down again by the police . . . Stockhausen and exhausting” [19]. Music for Persepo- posers. Brown recalls: “John Cage was was convinced that his music would calm the listeners. And so it was. After half an lis Event (Fig. 5) included Signals and greeted by many devoted fans as a much- hour of music the waves subsided [15]. Landrover, collaborative compositions by loved ‘hero.’” Students at Tehran Univer- Cage, Tudor and Mumma, and Tudor’s sity, such as Persian-American composer Tehran Journal described the 1972 fes- Rainforest (1968), which Mumma recalls Dariush Dolat-shahi, experienced the fes- tival as “the most avant-garde and most was “performed with a forest of electro- tival close up because the music depart- controversial Shiraz Festival so far” [16]. acoustic transducers of his own uncanny ment was actively involved in the events. Electronic music dominated the offer- design” [20]. Dolat-shahi recalls that “Every year, I ings, which included numerous concerts Setterfield remembers dancing at the waited for the event to happen. These fes- by Stockhausen, performances by MCDC ruins of Persepolis as “glorious and phys- tivals were a major source of information featuring musicians John Cage, David Tu- ically hard . . . the ground was rocky, so for us about what was happening musi- dor and Gordon Mumma, and tradi- we had to wear shoes.” The only décor cally outside Iran. I received my own first commission when I was nineteen years old” [24]. Dolat-shahi became “part of a group of four people who used to get together and listen to modern music including Fig. 3. Iannis Xenakis Schoenberg, Berg, Ligeti,” and realized in a heated dialog his first work for strings and tape, pop- during the 1971 Shiraz Arts Festival. Screen- ular instrumentation during the festi- shot from a Pars Video vals, using a small tape recorder. Festival documentary. performances also influenced the devel- opment of Iranian theater, as Iranian- American writer and theater artist Zara Houshmand observes about a recent Tehran performance directed by Majid Jafari: “Jafari’s work, like that of Pessyani and so many Iranian directors, owes a huge debt to Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, Tadeusz Kantor, and other lead- ing lights of the European avant-garde who accepted invitations to the Shiraz Festival before the revolution” [25]. Government agencies offered scholar- ships to support young artists to study abroad. Among them were Dolat-shahi, supported by NIRT, and Massoud Pour- farrokh, supported by the Iranian Min- istry of Art and Culture. The Shah once wrote:
Gluck, The Shiraz Arts Festival 23
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20 by guest on 26 September 2021 GLOBAL CROSSINGS
Fig. 4. The 1972 performance of Hymnen at Persepolis, from the archives of the Stockhausen Foundation for Music, Kuerten
It requires lively insight and imagina- Dolat-shahi thus began work at the compose music, including electronic mu- tion to transplant Western technology ef- Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music sic for a time, in Iran. Dolat–shahi recalls fectively to a country like Persia. As I Center in 1976, preparing the tape por- that in 1977 NIRT commissioned a work have said, much adaptation is necessary, and we largely rely for this upon the tion of his festival-commissioned piece for electronics and chamber orchestra young men whom we send abroad for From Behind the Glass, a composition for for the 1977 festival from Columbia- post-graduate study and who naturally 20 strings, piano, tape and echo system. Princeton director Ussachevsky, but a few encounter the problem of using their Critic Janet Lazarian Shaghaghi wrote months before Ussachevky’s scheduled new knowledge in home conditions. Many of these adaptations are almost in- that the work “conveyed a stimulating departure from the United States, the de- stinctive or unconscious, but others may imagination of space, was original and clining political situation made a visit im- require extended research [26]. good to listen to” [28]. The official festi- possible. Chou Wen-Chung, chairman of val program observed that “electronic the Columbia University music depart- As Gordon Mumma observes, “the out- music liberated [Dolat-shahi] from old ment, also visited Iran. He recalls: ward looking ideas of the Iranian gov- concepts of melody and harmony and ernment and the aspirations of their provoked further explorations into the My students Massoud Pourfarrokh and intellectuals and younger creative artists” raw material of music, i.e. sound” [29]. Dariush Dolat-shahi told about many of pointed to such collaboration. The 1976 festival also included Dolat- the problems faced by Iranian students. They came up with the idea of setting Dolat-shahi first studied abroad in Am- shahi’s Two Movements for String Orchestra up a cultural exchange between the two sterdam in 1970. In 1974, he returned to (1970) and Mirage for orchestra and tape, countries at Columbia University, like Tehran, but “felt the need to continue my which, wrote Shaghaghi, “easily unfolded The Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange education” and thus received an addi- its beauty; it bloomed as fast as it was that I had already established. . . . Mas- soud and Dariush arranged for me to go tional scholarship to attend Columbia started, the sound effects and the or- to Iran and meet with officials in that University, where he was already famil- chestral music blended harmoniously” country. iar with the works of faculty members Mil- [30]. The programming also included The three of us went together as pri- ton Babbitt and Vladimir Ussachevsky. music by other forward-looking Iranian vate citizens. It was probably in the late NIRT expressed interest in training him composers such as Alireza Mashayeki, spring or late August of 1978, before the school year began, and we made a con- to play a staff role in the proposed new Mohammad Taghi Massoudieh and Hor- nection with the Minister of Culture. He arts center being developed by Iannis Xe- moz Farhat, then head of the television was a very powerful man, quite western- nakis and sponsored by NIRT. “The idea network’s Music Council and an artistic ized and close to the Shah. The Ministry for this studio had a lot of support, since advisor of the festival. building was like a palace. We had a cou- ple of very productive sessions together. a lot of electronic music was performed The final festival in 1977 featured He was very pleasant and knowledgeable, at the festivals. They wanted to have a ma- works by Fawzieh Majd, Ivo Malec, Bach well briefed on the intention of my trip. jor center of their own” [27]. and Mashayeki, who continues to actively The Minister was very supportive of this
24 Gluck, The Shiraz Arts Festival
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20 by guest on 26 September 2021 new idea and he offered to provide sub- have been to invite the Minister of Cul- of everything, but to hire Iranians locally stantial funding. ture to the United States, agree on terms to execute his ideas” [34]. The Center would have been some- and get the Center started [31]. thing quite exciting. It was to be broadly To summarize Xenakis’s proposal, ac- based around music in the context of a cording to his “General Guidelines,” the cultural exchange between the two coun- These plans collapsed, as did planning Center was to be an interdisciplinary and for the 1978 festival, as the revolution ap- tries. Iranian scholars and composers collaborative “scientific research center” GLOBAL CROSSINGS would come to the United States to in- proached. for sound and visual arts, cinema, theater, teract with their American counterparts and be exposed to more advanced stud- ballet, poetry and literature, to “continue ies in terms of compositional principles all the activities year round of the Annual and technology. There was interest on A PROPOSED CENTER Festival of Shiraz-Persepolis.” In addition both sides for it to include electronic mu- FOR THE ARTS to public presentations, the center would sic. My interest on behalf of Columbia University was to send American musi- The success of Xenakis’s monumental support ongoing work by up to 40 visit- cians and scholars to research Persian Polytope de Persépolis led to his engagement ing and 50 permanent artists, scientists music in Iran, not just ethnomusicology, as “Engineering consultant in charge and staff members. It was to be “essen- but also looking to the future of their mu- of the architecture of a Cité des Arts in tially based on the most advanced re- sic. The Minister of Culture was inter- Shiraz-Persepolis” [32]. Discussions for search and technological events, leading ested in developing a center for cultural exchange in which students from both the proposed center actually may have us towards the future of Art,” open to all countries could study the old, repre- begun as early as 1968 [33]. Xenakis’s de- people, fostering exchange between its sented by Iran, and the new, represented sign was based upon his plan for “a very participants and the city (not “an intel- by the United States. similar project he devised [in 1970] as a lectual ghetto”), sharing resources with The rest was up to me to convince Co- lumbia University to work with us. There Le Corbusier Center for the Arts [in the university, cultivating traditional arts was no question in my mind that it would Chaux-de-Fonds]. The plan, as far as can “observed through the light of the most indeed happen. The next step would be told, was to make Xenakis in charge advanced research and experimentation
Fig. 5. Persepolis Event, Douglas Dunn (left), Carolyn Brown (rear) and Merce Cunningham (far right). (Photo courtesy Cunningham Dance Foundation archive)
Gluck, The Shiraz Arts Festival 25
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20 by guest on 26 September 2021 who, like yourself, have made the Shiraz- Persepolis Festival unique in the world. But, faced with inhuman and unneces- sary police repression that the Shah and his government are inflicting on Iran’s youth, I am incapable of lending any
GLOBAL CROSSINGS moral guarantee, regardless of how frag- ile that may be, since it is a matter of artist creation. Therefore, I refuse to partici- pate in the festival [37].
Other artists also experienced conflicts with the political situation in Iran. Car- olyn Brown recalls that while there was no controversy about MCDC’s 1972 visit, “we were not unaware of the political dif- ficulties and sensed there was worse to follow.” Merce Cunningham Dance Company was invited to return a few years later, in 1976. Gordon Mumma recalls the oppo- sition of friends and colleagues to the proposed visit:
[composer/pianist] Frederic Rzewski, and particularly [artist] Jean Tinguely argued with me most strongly. Tinguely Fig. 6. David Tudor (left) and John Cage performing at the 1971 festival. said I was being “immoral to condone a (Photo courtesy Cunningham Dance Foundation archive) repressive and elitist regime.” My argu- ment in response was that my going to Iran was because of the people and their culture, for which my respect required and not through the normal musicolog- a human rights abuser. Xenakis re- entering their communities, and learn- ical, theatrical, choreographic . . . aca- sponded in an open letter to the French ing of their world from their perspective. demic traditions.” newspaper Le Monde asserting his right to Their government regime was not their In his plans, Xenakis referred to the free expression: choice. sound arts element as a “Center for Stud- Company administrator Rigg recalls ies of Mathematical and Automated Mu- What motivated me to go to Iran is this: that sic,” which Kanach believes likely to a deep interest in this magnificent coun- try, so rich with its superposed civiliza- have been similar to Xenakis’s center in tions and such a hospitable population; reconsideration of the second visit to Paris, CEMAMu, the Center for Studies the daring adventure of a few friends who Iran began with an Iranian poet’s visit in Mathematics and Automation of Mu- founded the Shiraz-Persepolis Festival to Merce and John. It was an interest- sic. The proposed center was to include where all the various tendencies of con- ing discussion. Merce decided to put the temporary, avant-garde art intermingle question to the dancers. I was charged to laboratories for “automated” digital and with the traditional arts of Asia and gather information for the meeting. I re- analog music and film sound editing, Africa; plus the warm reception my mu- call a trip to Amnesty International’s two recording studios, a library and re- sical and visual propositions have en- office at 72nd and Broadway. [MCDC pair workshop, a 10,760-square-foot “Hall countered there by the young members dancer] Meg Harper spoke eloquently against going, and the decision was made of Nothingness” and parking facilities of the general audience. . . . My philoso- phy, which I put into practice every day, [38]. for 1,000 cars. The proposed budget was consists of the freedom of speech, the 35,000,000 francs (approximately US$7 right to total criticism. I am not an isola- The “interesting discussion” was one in million) [35]. As nothing was put into tionist in a world as tangled and compli- which the Iranian poet attempted to dis- writing at the time, it is possible that cated as today’s. . . . it is impossible to suade Cunningham and Cage from go- name one single country that is truly free plans never reached the stage at which and without multifaceted compromises, ing, while they offered counterarguments administrative details, including Dolat- without any surrender of principles [36]. [39]. shahi’s formal role, would be defined. David Behrman recalls that at that Ultimately, a combination of factors, point, “there was a controversy about the particularly his displeasure with the Pah- politics, and several members of the com- OLITICAL P lavi government, led Xenakis to cease fur- pany at that time, including me, said we CONSIDERATIONS ther involvement with the proposed arts didn’t want to go, because the invitation AND CONFLICTS center and the festival. He wrote Farrokh was from the Shah’s inner circle” [40]. In- The politics involved in Western artists Ghaffary, the festival Deputy Director deed, the company voted not to go, which participating in the festival and proposed General (addressed by Xenakis as P. Brown remembers as “a political decision arts center were complex. Negative reac- Gaffray), on the dancers’ part but Merce would tions by Iranians to Xenakis’s Polytope de have gone, believing one should present Persépolis extended to Iranians living in You know how attached I am to Iran, one’s work wherever, and the work itself her history, her people. You know my Paris, the composer’s home city. There, joy when I realized projects in your festi- might change people’s minds, that is, to Islamic opponents of the Shah publicly val, open to everyone. You also know open them.” criticized Xenakis for collaborating with of my friendship and loyalty to those Gordon Mumma strongly advocated
26 Gluck, The Shiraz Arts Festival
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20 by guest on 26 September 2021 going to Iran, as did John Cage. Mumma too late. Speaking in New York City in Jan- ported narratives without which the in- observes: uary 1978, she defended the importance ternational history of contemporary and of balancing past and present in a tradi- electronic arts cannot be fully told [48]. Political pressures in the United States were very intense, similar to the argu- tional society: ments for not interacting with the apart- Acknowledgments We in Iran, as in most other Asian soci- heid situation of South Africa. Merce, Special thanks to Sharon Kanach, Dariush Dolat- GLOBAL CROSSINGS John Cage, all of us were caught in this eties, are faced with the tension between our own traditional values and the de- shahi and Shahrokh Yadegari; Gordon Mumma, Car- crossfire of words. Refusing the invitation olyn Brown, Jean Rigg, Valda Setterfield, David would go unmentioned and unnoticed mands of Western science and technol- Behrman, James Klosty, David Vaughan and Stacy in Iran; quickly forgotten in the United ogy and all that it brings along in its wake, Stumpman (MCDC); and Kathinka Pasveer (Stock- States, and nothing would be accom- including nihilism and despair.... We hausen Foundation For Music). plished. . . . I can’t imagine anyone taking wish to learn from the experience of the West without emulating it blindly . . . [or] the “armchair” position that it is immoral References and Notes to attend to creative artists from “repres- losing knowledge of ourselves [47]. sive and elitist regimes.” 1. Nikki R. Keddie, Modern Iran: Roots and Results of By 1977, economic decline had partic- Revolution (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2003) pp. ularly affected the middle class. The ex- 148–169; George Lenczowski, ed., Iran under the Pahlavis (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, THE APPROACHING cesses of the wealthy elite highlighted 1978) p. xvi; William Shawcross, The Shah’s Last Ride: REVOLUTION AND the increasing gap between rich and Fate of an Ally (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988) pp. 58–72. THE END OF AN ERA poor. The Western cultural manners of the elite became a tool of the opposition 2. Except where noted, quotations of Gordon The Shah’s hold on his regime was tenu- in their complaints against the regime. Mumma are from an e-mail correspondence with the ous. As Dolat-shahi recalls, “the political author, 24–28 December 2005 and 9 January 2006. Political suppression increased and Is- situation was growing difficult. Islamic lamic political groups correspondingly 3. Quotations of Carolyn Brown are from an e-mail political demonstrations started in 1975 correspondence with the author, 25 December 2005. grew in strength. The Shah and his fam- and 1976, especially at Tehran Univer- ily went into exile in 1979, the year of the 4. Quotations of Valda Setterfield are from a tele- sity.” Some festival events were particu- phone interview by the author, 25 January 2006. Islamic revolution. The climate for ex- larly disturbing to religious Iranians. perimental art turned hostile. Dolat- 5. Tehran Journal, August 1976. The exact date is un- Historian William Shawcross observes, known as the source is a photocopy of a page from shahi recalls: the original paper, saved by Dolat-shahi. Many By the mid-seventies this had become records in Iran were destroyed following the Revo- one of the most controversial cultural At the beginning of the Islamic revolu- lution. tion in Iran, my scholarship was cut off events in the country . . . sometimes [the 6. Tony Phillips, “Something Like the Sun: Cun- Empress’s] enthusiasms seemed to jar. Al- by the new government. All of my dreams ningham and His Colleagues Recall 50 Years on the though she was determined to preserve were ruined, so I decided to learn more Road,” Village Voice, 10–16 July 2002. Iran’s past, her contemporary tastes were about art and so I took some courses. often too avant-garde, too cosmopolitan, That told me what kind of government it 7. Shiraz Arts Festival official program, September 1972. Shiraz Event included “Walkaround Time,” “Ob- for most of her countrymen [41]. was going to be. My family gradually left and now there is no one there. jects,” “Canfield,” “Rainforest” and “How to Pass, Kick, Fall, and Run.” Persepolis Event included “Field Queen Noor of Jordan concurred: Dances,” “Suite for Five,” “Scramble,” “Signals,” “The aim of the Shiraz Festival was per- “Landrover” and “Tread.” CONCLUSION fectly commendable—to spark cross- 8. Iannis Xenakis, The Music of Architecture: Architec- pollination between Iran and the rest of Despite political controversies and a rel- tural Projects, Texts, and Realization, Sharon Kanach, the world through a program that re- atively short lifespan, the Shiraz Arts Fes- ed. and trans. (Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon, 2006) Sec- tion 4.09. Sources drawn from the Xenakis Archives flected the latest trends in theater and tival proved influential both to Western at Bibliothèque nationale de France. the performing arts. Unfortunately, this artists, who were provided with an un- 9. James Harley, review of “Iannis Xenakis: Persepolis,” approach backfired badly” [42]. usual abundance of resources to show Computer Music Journal 25, No. 1 (2001) 92–93. Opposition to the festival grew in Iran their work to highly receptive and en- 10. Maurice Fleuret, Review of Polytope de Persépolis, and provided fodder for religious revo- gaged audiences, and to young Iranian Nouvel Observateur, 6 September 1971, cited at lutionaries in exile. In 1977, Ayatollah musicians and theater directors, some of
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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/leon.2007.40.1.20 by guest on 26 September 2021 22. Shiraz Arts Festival official program, September 32. Xenakis [8] Section 3.04, footnote 6, citing Kay- 43. Speech given on 28 September 1977. See Is- 1971. han International Edition, 9 December 1968. lamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting
GLOBAL CROSSINGS December 2005 and 25 January 2006. 35. Summarized from Xenakis [8] Section 3.06. 46. Shawcross [1] pp. 97–98. 25. Zara Houshmand, “Iran in Theater,” Words without Borders,
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