Rock and alternative music in Iran
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| Iranian music: Topics | |||||||||
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| Languages | Persian, English, German | ||||||||
| Awards | Tehran Underground Music Festival | ||||||||
| Charts | none | ||||||||
| Festivals | Tehran Underground Music Festival | ||||||||
| Iranian Online Rock Radio Stations | Zirzamin | ||||||||
| Online Media | Tehran Avenue, Zirzamine, Cafe Tehran, MetalHead, Blues Bazar | ||||||||
| Major Iranian bands | |||||||||
| Niyaz– Farzad Golpayegani– Kahtmayan– Kaveh Yaghmaei– Kourosh Yaghmaei– Meera– O-HUM– Abjeez– Arashk– Vas– Barad– Laleh– Kiosk– Buddahead– Shahin and Sepehr– Reza Yazdani– Safeer-e-arsh– Agah Bahari– Hypernova– Mavara | |||||||||
Iranian rock (موسیقی راک ایرانی) is a form of rock music that is largely produced in Europe and Tehran's underground circles, and is rising to challenge "Tehrangeles pop", which has dominated the popular music genre of Iran for decades.
Iranian rock is almost entirely in Persian language. There are however musicians of Iranian descent both inside and outside Iran that produce their rock music in languages such as English or German. One example is Dario Amini whose hit "Just 4 today" was frequently heard on Iranian rock radiostations in 2006.[citation needed]
Iranian rock has its roots in American rock, British rock and German rock, but has its own distinctive elements mixed in to create a homegrown class of sounds and melodies, whether progressive, hard, or heavy metal.
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[edit] History
Rock music in Iran has its beginnings in the 1970s with musicians such as Kourosh Yaghmaei. The 1979 Islamic revolution did not allow this musical genre to survive long. Ayatollah Khomeini banned rock music, inspiring The Clash to write Rock the Casbah.
During the late 1990s president Mohammad Khatami advocated a more open cultural atmosphere in his domestic policies, Iran came to witness a unique blossoming of an indigenous breed of rock and hard rock musicians. What separates this movement from its Tehrangeles pop counterpart is the young age group and the fact that it is almost entirely homegrown, and mostly underground.[1]
One of the first rock concerts ever to take place was that of an anonymous but highly acclaimed band in Tehran's underground scene[2] called "Pezhvak". The event was so significant that it even drew a Newsweek reporter to the concert. (.wma sample 1) (2)
[edit] The contemporary scene
Within a few years after the launch of Tehran's underground scene in the late nineties, some bands started superimposing the poetry of Persian literature such as Hafez in their lyrics on top of classical western rock tunes and melodies, and peppered with sounds of traditional Persian music.[3] (mp3 sample)
Among the pioneers of this movement, the rock band O-Hum was first permitted to play in freely mixed sex concerts for Christian minorities in Tehran.[4] Today, there are underground competitions and music critics writing of these bands. Occasionally the government allows rock concerts to take place under strict conditions.[5] Music with english lyrics has been performed by bands such as Barad and The Technicolor Dream.
[edit] Rising faces and sounds
The following samples a list of homegrown Iranian rock bands, mostly active in Iran. Some are approved by the government, other continue to operate underground because of the restrictions imposed by The Ministry of Islamic Guidance.
- The government approved band Meera:
- O-Hum, mixing Hafez poems with rock music:
- Sarakhs Alternative rock band based in Tehran.
- Mordab (ram)
- Beh man doroogh begoo (m3u)
- "Broken" by Buddahead. The "top-grade"[6] rock band is said to have a "spellbinding tenor and a real knack for spinning out ear candy."[7]
- Arashk, a hard progressive rock band
- Agah Bahari, who has been collaborating with Derek Sherinian, formerly of Dream Theater and Planet X.
- Farzad Golpayegani: deemed one of "Iran's guitar monsters" according to Iranian Rock magazine "Zirzamin".[8]
- Abjeez, Persian "World pop" band from Sweden (The Abjeez unique sound is influenced by wide mixture of Reggae, Flamenco, SKA, Latino and Rock mastered to its own description of original melody and songs.
- Laleh was nominated with 7 Grammis in Sweden in 1995. She won 3 of the nominations for her song Live Tomorrow (video clip)
Public open live concerts are heavily restricted by the government. Most rock bands however can obtain permission to perform on stage live, provided their music is purely instrumental. A typical example of what is tolerated is the performance of the band Kathmayan in Kish, Iran.
In July 2005, for the first time, a music production company in Canada by the name of Bamahang Productions released an album from another homegrown Iranian Rock band called Adameh Mamooli (Ordinary Man), and succeeded in adding it to the iTunes Digital Music catalog, making it the first Iranian Underground Rock Music album to be available for digital download from iTunes. In December 2005, the same company managed to finally release the 2nd album from O-Hum entitled Aloodeh
[edit] References
- ^ Asharq Al-Awsat: "Iran's Underground Music Revolution". Accessed May 27, 2007. Link: [1]
- ^ The Iranian, Link: [2]
- ^ Tehran Avenue: Link: [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ The Iranian. Link: [5]
- ^ Review by New York Post, July 2004.
- ^ Review by Washington Post, July 2004.
- ^ Zirzamin: [6]
[edit] Major Iranian rock record labels
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- MTV report: Iranian band Hypernova tours in New York City
- BBC Report on O-Hum's first state sanctioned public concert
- BBC: "Fresh Iranian bands ready to rock"
- The Guardian: Rock bands struggling to be heard in Iran
- Christian Science Monitor: "You say you want a revolution? Iran bands rock on."
- The Boston Phoenix: "IRAN SO FAR AWAY: Tehran rockers 127 make it to America at last"
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