A Vulnerable and Problematic Art
The state has always tried to control artistic production and music is one of the more effective ways of directing desires. In this, the state is usually hand in glove with financial interests, even though the former tries to pass its action off on moral grounds.
The businessmen of music today are following the same guidelines that any businessman follows: limiting musical groups to only a few to control the audience's expectations and to make the market predictable for themselves.
If the market doesn't act according to their forecasts, they will then appeal to other means to secure their position. Religion is usually the best pretext for these entrepreneurs to get at what they want or to stop someone else from getting what they want. The fate of the music industry doesn't even figure into the equation. Perhaps various discontinuities in our musical history have made it so difficult today to trace back musical roots.
Many occurrences in the past month indicate a more difficult time for the Iranian music scene.
Foreign bands short of a performance
The Juliani Jazz Quartet started preparing for their concert in Tehran in early spring 2004. They obtained the green light from the Ershad Security. This is the Ministry of Culture's intelligence arm and their go-ahead is almost half the battle in obtaining permission for a concert, especially for foreign musicians.
Everything seemed set – until at the last minute – when the band was informed that permission was not granted. By then the band was in Iran and getting ready to perform. The Italian embassy subsequently invited the quartet to perform on its grounds, for one night if not the two nights at Niavaran Palace first intended. Limited as it was, that concert did take place.
The week after the Italians, that is on the 8th and 9th of October, a classical ensemble from Switzerland was also scheduled to perform at the Palace. This time, however, the Society of Niavaran Musicians was on alert and informed the Swiss of possible problems.
The ensemble eventually cancelled the concert. The Society subsequently announced that it would suspend all its scheduled concerts until decision-making on the part of various officials has become more transparent.
The bureaucracy game
Over the past five months and with a change in the Music Center leadership, obtaining permission for concerts and album releases has become increasingly more difficult. Whether the instalment of Homafar, the new head of the institution, is responsible for these changes or not is not clear yet.
It can safely be assumed that confusion in various layers of decision-making and the interference of financial interests are at the root.
Several concerts by Iranian musicians were also cancelled in the period, including those of Nour, Meera, Rumi and Arian (the last in the city of Kerman).
It is notable that the mentioned bands are among those that have performed many times in the past and one would assume that their managers are now familiar with the procedures and pitfalls of getting a concert permit.
Iranian album inspired by Bonnie M
Albums are faring no better. Master tar and setar player and composer Hossein Alizadeh and folk musician Hossein Hamidi are still awaiting permission to release their albums, after 8 months. This doesn't mean, of course, that Lilikoo, an Iranian album inspired by Bonnie M's "Daddy Cool," couldn't get one. It did so in 25 days.
The Queen album permit continued to pester Ershad as many of the conservative MPs tuned to the news on BBC radio, listened to the report about the permission, and, as a result, questioning the issued permit afterward.
Farshad Fozuni, with music by Ramin Behna, who participated in the Underground Music Competition with "The Child and the Old Man," was unable to get permission to release his album at first. The outfit responsible for rejecting the permit to Fozuni was neither the Lyrics Council nor the Music Council but a new council called the Cultural Council, which found the album "nihilistic" and rejected it on that ground.
"Replace 'preacher' with 'poet' and 'police' with 'thug'"
The Council then "suggested" alterations for the permit to be issued, among them the addition of plain words at the end of each song to reduce the nihilistic effect of music and the change of several words in the lyrics including "preacher" for "poet" and "police" for "thug".
It is notable that the album lyrics were those of Shel Silverstein previously translated and published in Iran.
The Cultural Council is a new entity and its members are yet unknown to this pen. The only thing I could find out was that it is composed of representatives from the Leader of the Revolution, the religious city of Qom, and the Ministry of Interior.
The Council is different from other such supervisory outfits in that it can appeal to vague political and philosophical explanations to justify its decision.
In the news but under the table
DJ Maryam was the hottest gossip personality in September. She was, hearsay had it, arrested on the charge of illegally distributing a CD album. But then, the 18-year-old singer appeared in an interview with BBC's Persian website.
Apparently, the father of Mahshar, the real name of DJ Maryam, arranged the interview to clarify his daughter's situation. No, she was not arrested and she continues to sing to women-only audiences on religious occasions.
She doesn't know how a CD of her songs is in people's hands but she is sure that someone must have recorded it live at one of her performances. This is when the CD now available in black market is studio recorded.
Mahshar believes that what she does is not contrary to social sensibilities. She is pious herself and the fact that her composer and band members are all men doesn't pose a problem because she appears before them in Islamic garb, "those that I currently work with are all like my brother," she says in the interview.
She claims that even if given permission under different circumstances, she will not perform for men.
Shadi Vatanparast
© TehranAvenue
This article was previously published in TehranAvenue, October 2004