In the tense and transformative days after Mahsa Amini’s demise in police custody in September 2022 for allegedly sporting a head scarf improperly, a brand new anthem surged from Iran’s streets: “Women, Life, Freedom.”
First heard at Amini’s burial in her hometown of Saqqez, the slogan swept the nation, shortly morphing right into a manifesto and protest chant so highly effective that inside days, it was set to music — amplifying collective grief and resistance with a rhythm that echoed throughout cities and continents.
Against this backdrop, musicians like Toomaj Salehi, Shervin Hajipour, and Saman Yasin emerged as a few of the motion’s most influential voices. Their work did not simply accompany the protests, it helped propel them to ranges that scared authorities.
Yasin is a singer who gained renown as political activist following the Islamic republic’s actions towards him — highlighting how repression can breed icons.
Another instance is Saba Zamani’s stark protest tune Fed Up With Your Religion, which soared in reputation for its uncooked simplicity and radical edge.
A Rapidly Radicalizing Repertoire
But anthems of freedom come at a worth.
Authorities responded with a sweeping crackdown, focusing on musicians whose songs had change into the soundtrack of dissent. As Tehran-based arts and tradition reporter Mazdak Ali-Montazeri instructed RFE/RL’s Radio Farda, “If these songs weren’t influential, their singers would not be in jail.”
From arrests to censorship, the authorities’ repression continued, and it prolonged not simply to male musicians but additionally to girls whose voices led the cost.
Haman Vafri, a pop-classical musician who launched a sociology-themed album shortly earlier than the protests, spoke to Radio Farda concerning the new dangers artists face.
“Political repression takes a toll on artists,” Vafri mentioned. “Pressure from safety providers or the specter of being arrested makes them query: Is the price of artwork too excessive? Do I step again, or do I settle for the chance and inform society what’s occurred? That push-and-pull means typically a tune can create a motion, or simply stall.”
The crackdown solely heightened the position of music as a type of activism.
Vafri notes a dramatic shift in musical model. “Music moved towards harsher and extra energetic genres like rock and rap. A complete era emerged that listened to rap and immediately began producing their very own songs distributed broadly on-line. The existence of social media itself is a central situation.”
The digital panorama has made protest music more durable to stamp out as tracks shared on-line attain tens of millions and complicate the Iranian authorities’s efforts at censorship.
“It pertains to that on-line area,” mentioned Nahid Siamdoust, an assistant professor of Media and Middle Eastern Studies on the University of Texas at Austin who wrote a guide on the politics of music in Iran.
“Most younger Iranians are on social media on daily basis, forming a totally nongovernmental social area,” Siamdoust instructed Radio Farda. “Discourses outdoors the official boundaries of the Islamic republic have change into normalized in these songs.”
Anthems Past And Present
The protest musicians of 2022 constructed on a legacy stretching again to the Green Movement in 2009, when the remix of the 1979 revolutionary tune Defenders Of The Sun Of The Forest grew to become a motion marker.
With the rise of digital connectivity, uprisings grew to become extra frequent and widespread, and each slogans and sounds grew to become extra radicalized — a direct response to dashed hopes for reform and the rise of hard-liners in energy.
As Vafri displays, earlier protest music was “softer, extra melodic, typically drawing from people traditions. There have been emotions like hope, unity, and resistance at their core, and the music transferred these messages nicely.”
Today, nonetheless, “the construction of protest songs has modified” below the stress of an more and more violent state response, she mentioned.
The ‘Decentralization’ Of Protest Anthems
No tune captured the decentralized power of the Women, Life, Freedom motion fairly like Hajipour’s viral hit For, the lyrics of which have been woven from dozens of protest feedback posted on-line.
One of the strains used within the tune was from Reza Shoohani, a cryptocurrency entrepreneur. He described the tune to Radio Farda as “superbly decentralized — simply as in as we speak’s world of blockchain, the music, lyrics, and voice all emerge from the motion of the folks. Shervin merely collected them collectively.”
Pop singer Mehdi Yarrahi paid a worth for his tune Roosarito — which implies Your Head Scarf in English — criticizing the strict costume code for girls that led to Amini’s detention and supreme demise.
Yarrahi grew to become a family title in August 2023 after releasing the tune.
Soon after, although, he was detained and in January 2024 was sentenced to 2 years and eight months in jail and 74 lashes over the tune.
The jail sentence was later modified to accommodate arrest with an ankle monitor as a result of his well being issues, however the lashes have been carried out in March this 12 months.
Even because the Islamic republic’s crackdown continues, the music persists, inspiring new waves of resistance and hope. Iranian protest musicians stay targets, however their voices, amplified one anthem at a time, have proved they’re additionally among the many motion’s fiercest weapons.
