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Abstract
In the decades preceding Iran's 1979 revolution, the country underwent rapid cultural change, implemented in part by a monarchic regime seeking to ‘modernize’ the nation. As Iran's then Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, increased his personal power in the 1960s, many Iranians resented aspects of his policy of ‘westernization’. This resentment was a significant factor in the emerging revolutionary movement. At the same time, many Iranians welcomed aspects of what they saw as western modernity, including its effects on popular music. Iranian popular culture changed most radically in the 1960s, when popular music shifted from the styles seen as ‘eastern’ that were prominent in the 1950s to the ‘westernized’ styles that would dominate the 1970s. This article examines the complexities of this shift, focusing on the music of popular singers Googoosh, Delkash, Vigen, Susan and Aghasi, as well as beat bands such as the Rebels. It analyses the effects on musical practices of cinema, television and the gap between rich and poor in 1960s Iran, as well as the problematic notions of modernity and ‘the West’. Finally, the article considers the position of 1960s Iranian popular music today, especially its role as an object of nostalgia in Iran and the diaspora.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the anonymous referees for their detailed, helpful and generous comments on the rough first draft. The author is very grateful to Hassan, Shahnaz, Mehrdad, Doctor R, Nora, Maryam, Sasan, Hooman Asadi, Nasser Cheshmazar, Hamid Reza Sadr, Amir Mansour and others in Iran who generously shared their memories of and/or thoughts on music and the 1960s. Outside Iran, the author is especially grateful to Rezvan and Abbas Chamanara, Koroush Arianejad, Anthony Shay and Jamal. Thanks also to Kay Dreyfus for her patience and support. The author is grateful to the Monash University Faculty of Arts for a Postdoctoral Fellowship that made it possible to begin this research and to Austraining International for an Endeavour Research Fellowship that enabled its completion.
Notes
1 Sasan Fatemi, personal communication, Tehran, 2010.
2 Sasan Fatemi, ‘La Musique Légère Urbaine dans la Culture Iranienne: Réflexions sur les notions de classique et populaire’ (‘Light Urban Music in Iranian Culture: Reflections on the concepts of “classical” and “popular”’) (PhD Thesis, Université Paris X Nanterre, 2005), 435, cited in Anthony Shay, ‘Persian Pop Music’, in Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume VI: Africa and the Middle East, ed. Richard Jankowsky (New York and London: Continuum, forthcoming 2010). Citation translated by Shay.
3 Bruno Nettl, ‘Attitudes towards Persian Music in Tehran, 1969’, Musical Quarterly 56/2 (1970), 183.
4 Ibid. Several Iranian films of this period feature dramatizations of music hall and nightclub scenes. See, for example, Mohammad Ali Fardin's 1966 film Beggars of Tehran, featuring Pouran (). This film is included in the 2007 special edition seven-disc DVD set Googoosh in the Movies (various directors) (Tarzana, California, USA: Pars Video, Inc.), www.parsvideo.com (accessed 23 September 2010).
5 Shahnaz, personal communication, Tehran, 2010.
6 Nettl, ‘Attitudes towards Persian Music’, 183.
7 Anwyn Crawford, ‘The Monarch of Middlebrow: On the Deplorable Career of Nick Cave’, Overland 197 (2009) (accessed 30 July 2010), http://web.overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-197/feature-anwyn-crawford.
9 Crawford, ‘The Monarch of Middlebrow’.
8 See Theodor W. Adorno, ‘On Popular Music’, Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences 9 (1941), 17–48.
10 For an analysis of ruhowzi, see Mahmoud M. Haery, ‘Ru-howzi: The Iranian Traditional Improvisatory Theatre’ (PhD Thesis, New York University, 1982).
12 Martin Stokes, ‘Place, Exchange and Meaning: Black Sea Musicians in the West of Ireland’, in Simon Frith (ed.), Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, Vol. IV: Music and Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 101.
11 However, in the 1970s, stylized versions of siyah bazi were frequently broadcast on Iranian television. Sasan, personal communication, 2010.
13 Hamid Reza Sadr, Iranian Cinema: A Political History (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 99.
14 Hope and Fear is included in the 2007 DVD set Googoosh in the Movies.
15 The region of Azerbaijan was split into the Soviet state (now independent) and its neighbouring province in northern Iran. Googoosh's parents were from Azerbaijan, but she grew up in Tehran, speaking both Persian and Azeri, which is in the Turkic language family.
16 Except for , the images in this article are of Iranian singles, 45 rpm records, produced in the 1960s and 1970s, which I bought at the fleamarket section of Tehran's ‘Friday Bazaar’ in 2010.
17 There are significant exceptions to this generalization, which are beyond the scope of this article, but crowded South Tehran is home to the city's less affluent and more ‘traditional’ residents, while North Tehran is home to the city's wealthier and generally more ‘secular’ residents. One exception in the 1960s was those South Tehran residents who had become wealthy through their underworld activities.
19 Abbas Milani, ‘Googoosh’, in Eminent Persians: The Men and Women who made Modern Iran, 1941–1979, Vol. 2 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 995.
18 See Googoosh, ‘Man o to’ (‘You and me’) (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoJsZDTcUaY&feature=related; ‘Ahuye Eshgh’ (‘Deer of Love’) (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv1GMf4Fa18&feature=related; and ‘Do panjereh’ (‘Two Windows’) (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUaKQKzDRjk
20 Bruno Nettl, Interviewed by Patricia Shehan Campbell, ‘Bruno Nettl on Music of Iran’, Music Educators Journal 81/3 (1994), 21. Nettl describes the ‘Middle Eastern culture area’ as ‘centred in the region of Iran, Turkey and the heartland of Arabic culture—Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and Egypt’. While he acknowledges the area's musical diversity, the category remains problematic, on one hand because of its potential to elide differences in traditions, and on the other, because it neglects relationships with other regions. For example, musical traditions in Iran and Turkey also have links with Central Asia, the Caucasus and parts of Eastern Europe.
21 Houchang E. Chehabi, ‘Voices Unveiled: Women Singers in Iran’, in Rudi Mathee and Beth Baron (eds), Iran and Beyond: Essays in Middle Eastern History in Honor of Nikki R. Keddie (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda, 2000), 163.
24 Ibid.
22 See Delkash, ‘Early Years’, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2V7kQVurcA; and Delkash with Vigen, ‘Bordi az Yadam’ (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOEpJWF8LM0
23 Sadr, Iranian Cinema, 79.
25 Tajvidi's 1950s work can be heard on the CD Flowers of Persian Song and Music: The Gulha Programmes, compiled Jane Lewisohn, produced Davoud Pirnia (School of Oriental and African Studies, London, UK, 2009).
26 Personal communication, Iran, 2010.
27 See Hayedeh, Moein, Andy, Morteza and Fattane (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRuyj37qK5I&feature=related
28 Hassan, personal communication, Tehran, 2010.
29 Bruno Nettl et al., Contemporary Music and Music Cultures (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1975), 82.
30 Ibid.
31 Email from Asadi, 2010.
32 See Susan, ‘Safar’ (‘Journey’) (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b4lEYv9ZVU; and Susan, ‘Che bad kardam’ (‘What a bad thing I did’) (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ8jI75qa8I&feature=related
33 See Aghasi, ‘Ameneh’ (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrv3zgssfcc&feature=related. This is Aghasi's most famous song, in which he characteristically changes tempo and rhythm.
34 Hassan, personal communication, Tehran, 2010.
35 Mehrdad, personal communication, Tehran, 2010.
36 Milani, ‘Googoosh’, 995.
37 Sadr, Iranian Cinema, 84.
38 Farzin Vahdat, God and Juggernaut: Iran's Intellectual Encounter with Modernity (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2002), 104.
39 ‘Enqelâb-e eslâmi va eshâ’ e-ye farhang-e isâr va shahâdat’, Ettelâ’ât (Iranian daily newspaper) (3 February 2000), 1378, cited in Ameneh Youssefzadeh, ‘The Situation of Music in Iran since the Revolution: the Role of Official Organizations’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology 9/2 (2000), 37. Citation translated by Youssefzadeh.
40 Ibid.
41 Jalâl Âl-e Ahmad, Gharbzadegi/Weststruckness, trans. John Green and Ahmad Alizadeh (Lexington, Ky.: Mazda, 1982).
42 Vahdat explains that gharbzadegi was ‘the Persian equivalent of dysiplexia, a Greek neologism coined by Ahmad Fardid, an Iranian philosopher who was influenced by Heidegger (Vahdat, God and Juggernaut, 114). Vahdat cites Âl-e Ahmad's definition of gharbzadegi as ‘the aggregate of symptoms afflicting the life, culture, civilization, and mode of thought of a people having no tradition to function as a fulcrum, no continuity in history, no gradient of [social] transformation, but having only what the machine brings them’, with reference to a Persian-language edition: Jalâl Âl-e Ahmad, Gharbzadegi (Tehran: Ravaaq, 1356/1977), 34–5. Citation translated by Vahdat. In a different context, Robert Wyatt's 1986 song ‘Gharbzadegi—Old Rottenhat’ features the line: ‘Gharbzadegi means nothing to me, Westernitis to you’.
43 Âl-e Ahmad, Gharbzadegi, cited in Vahdat, God and Juggernaut, 116.
44 Personal communication, Tehran, 2009 and 2010.
46 Ibid.
45 Campbell, ‘Bruno Nettl on Music of Iran’, 20.
47 Nettl, ‘Attitudes towards Persian Music’, 183.
48 Seyyed Alireza Miralinaghi refers to the magazine article in his unpublished manuscript ‘Dokhtare Masum'e Shahre Ma’ (‘Our City's Innocent Girl’), 3, cited in Milani, ‘Googoosh’.
50 Ibid., 210. The first transliterated sentence should read: ‘Vay, Saba, reseedam be senne to!’
49 Neda Maghbouleh, ‘“Inherited Nostalgia” among Second-generation Iranian Americans: A Case Study at a Southern California University’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 31/2 (2010), 211.
51 Ibid.
52 See Vigen, ‘Mara Beboos’ (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6jjIu3HgzU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TK3O6y8gD-A; and Vigen, ‘Mahtab’ (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3obEa0hPwA
53 See Vigen, ‘Lalai (Lullaby)’ (accessed 8 August 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpB5Enr3iaI. Although YouTube is officially blocked by Iran's government in 2010, most people interested in using it in Iran are able to obtain software that evades the filter. Thus, it is not always possible to know where the many comments on old Iranian pop recordings are written.
54 Saeed Ganji, ‘Persian Rock Comes of Age’, TehranAvenue (2006) (accessed 4 May 2010), http://tehranavenue.com/article.php?id=565
56 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
57 Shay, ‘Persian Pop Music’ (forthcoming 2011).
58 Ibid.
59 Ibid.
60 Richard Tapper, ‘Screening Iran: The Cinema as National Forum’, Global Dialogue 3/2–3 (2001) (accessed 5 August 2010), http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=154
61 See Googoosh perform at then Prince Reza Pahlavi's birthday party (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbkbCSjdNk4&feature=related
62 For a typical Farrokhzad performance, see ‘Dar-o va nemikonam’ (‘I'm Not Opening the Door’), (accessed 8 August 2010) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwKk3o7SFXg&feature=related
63 Shay, ‘Persian Pop Music’ (forthcoming).
64 See Black Cats, ‘A Chili Pum’, 1970s recording featuring Shahram, Ebi, Farhad and Mehrad (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHOROs0BCg
65 See The Rebels, ‘Indian Rebels’ (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EOIelOJmgc&feature=related
66 See Aref and Googoosh on Googoosh's television show ‘Cheshmak’, 1352/1973 (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGjuN2P4p7Yl and Aref with Fattane, Soli, Nooshafarin and Neli (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhrdkSxQ1_Y&feature=related
67 Raks Raks Raks (the Persian word for ‘dance’, 
is usually transliterated as raqs or raghs), ‘27 Golden Garage Psych Nuggets from the Iranian 60s Scène [sic]’ (Istanbul, Turkey, Raks Records, 2009). See Moha Jamin, ‘Raks Raks Raks’ (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKyRD2Ye5gA
68 Pomegranates (Licensed courtesy of Taraneh and Caltex Records, (P)&(C) Finders Keepers Records, Los Angeles, California, 2009). A few pop songs from the 1960s also appear on compilations with a much broader focus, such as Made in Persia: The World of Persian Grooves, compiled and mixed by Gülbahar Kültür (Germany, Bremen, Lola's World, Clubstar GmbH & Co KG, 2009).
69 The Littles, ‘Mehtaab’ (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1ZbcKY-H_0&feature=related
70 See Mahasti with Googoosh (accessed 8 August 2010), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUWDq2N9hxc&feature=related