Namjoo’s poetic talent, which is evident in the lyrics of his songs, against a background of folk music, led the Western press to call him “Bob Dylan of Iran”. It is a talent in which irony is mixed with melancholia, expressing a painfully comical political reality. in his songNeo-Kantian beliefsNamjoo describes the livelihood of Iranian society through its losses;
Namjoo sings, “Ours is Al-Shuhada Street.. We have leftovers..The pirated versions of the movie “The Godfather” are ours..The losing soccer team is ours..Constructive criticism is our share..Tomorrow is, perhaps, ours.” Namjoo ends with a message to the regime (represented by then-President Khatami) who is guiding its citizens to a coercive ideology, addressing it by saying, “Everything you read in your heart is yours… the Neo-Kantian creeds are mine.”
What is striking about Namjoo’s poetic style is its departure from the romantic ideals and resonant and loose revolutionary slogans. He does not make the oppressed Iranian society a romantic subject, but rather exposes it and exposes the penetration of power in all its faces and levels, in a cynical manner that is not devoid of bitterness. With this bitterness, Namjoo describes the injustice done not only to Iranians, but also to everyone who was destined to be born unfortunate in countries that lack freedom and bread. sings in a song,geographical determinismTo be born in Asia, this is called geographical oppression. You sit with your legs up in the air, and your breakfast is tea and a cigarette.”
Surah was composed by Namjo.the sun“, to the rhythms of rock, grafting it with poetic verses from Nizar Qabbani’s poem “Words” sung by Majida El Roumi. Despite his apology for leaking the song, which was not scheduled to come out in public, the regime in Iran insisted on criminalizing and imprisoning him, so Namjo fled to Europe, where He recorded the song with an Italian orchestra, turning what started as a joke into a means of defiance and resistance.
Shaheen Najafi: Rage Against the Machine
If Mohsen Namjoo is, according to the New York Times, Bob Dylan with a lute, then Shahin Najafi is, according to the projections of the same newspaper, the Persian version of Rage Against the Machine, which translates as Rage Against the Machine, and the machine in this context is a machine The mullahs’ repressive regime. Far from the distress of blues and melancholy oriental melodies, Najafi chose for his revolutionary expression a more direct and frank form of translating anger through the rhythms of hip-hop and rap.
Before immigrating to Germany in 2005, Najafi and university students formed a musical group, which was banned from performing after its second performance, on the grounds that it insulted the Islamic religion. As for the Iranian faction he joined in Germany, the official regime press accused it of being rude and promoting Marxist ideas. Shortly after the 2009 uprising, Najafi released a number of songs that commemorate the victims of police violence, including “Nada” and “When God Sleeps”.
And in a song “Our life is a dog’s life(Doggy Life), in which Najafi continues his satirical tradition of verbal manipulation to mix religious sanctities with sexual connotations (the “doggy style” position), says Najafi. “Shut up, accept the situation, this is what the messenger preached, accept, man or woman, it makes no difference, die, this is our life – the life of dogs“.
His sense of irony is most evident in the song “”period(The menstrual cycle) which he performs with Namjoo, which describes the total dominance of the Iranian regime over society, religion, culture, and even sex and the body, from a feminine and feminist point of view. The song likens the experience of women, under the Islamic Republic, to “pain between two men.” She likens the IRGC’s suppression of women’s body to the pain of hair removal. It also exposes the hypocrisy of a society that publicly forbids sex and, in secret, permits the prostitution of minors and adultery in sacred places. .
The song depicts the manifestations of the political system in the ordinary diaries of Iranian citizens, “lovers of the rebellious Hussein” and “modern followers of the defunct Khomeinist fashion”, who spend their time between “Shariati Street and Evin Prison”, watching “a miserable cinema were it not for Panahi’s films” (director Panahi means). . If we want to describe this song in its impudent terms, we can say that it is the middle finger extended in the face of the ultimate pinky of clerics and politicians, just as schoolgirls did in Iran. Despite their inhibitions and prohibitions, Iranian society is “we, the veiled sisters, wet under the quilt.” Because of their inhibitions and taboos, Iranian society is “a penis-centric and navel-obsessed society”.
His persistence in defying religious authority led him to release a comic song entitled “”pureAs if he had a hidden desire to throw himself with his hand – or rather with his voice – to destruction. Najafi dares to collect all the sacred and taboos of the Islamic system in one song, in which he swears in the name of “the pure”, and in the name of “Khomeini who came out of his mother’s womb while shouting O Ali! And in the name of “economic sanctions and the rising dollar,” and in the name of “love, Viagra, and artificial breasts” (etc..). Najafi swears by all these symbols that sum up the reality of Iranian society, praying to the imam to appear, “We are ready in our coffins, O Naqi.”
Of course, this song provoked Najafi with a murder fatwa and a $100,000 cash prize for whoever sheds his blood. He stayed for a while under the protection of the same German journalist who had offered refuge to Salman Rushdie before him, but he refused to stay in hiding for a decade, “because I’m a musician, and I have to perform.”
Women’s singing: a revolution in itself
On the women’s front, women’s singing is considered a spontaneous revolution, in light of the official prohibition and prohibition. The “Voice of Iran”, the title held by the Iranian pop icon Gogosh, was not exempt from this ban that silenced him for two decades, before the star decided to leave Iran in 2000 and resume her singing and acting career that was at its peak before the outbreak of the Islamic revolution in her country. . During the Green Uprising, Gogosh joined fellow exiled artists who supported their country’s revolution with protest and artistic production.
At the time, Gogosh released a song called “”I am Iran itself“, where the singer describes the experience of exile and longing for the homeland, mixed with the feeling of guilt that possesses the one who survived and no one else. I’m tired of the whip kiss, and all that’s left of me is a cage in the shape of a cat… Do you hear me? I am Iran and I am still wondering what happened.. Are you used to asylum and homesickness? Don’t forget me, I’m devastated.”
Today, in the wake of the discontented women’s movements, the producer and singer Shervin Hajibor borrowed the women’s voice to write an anthem for the movement entitled “in order to..The song came from a trend in the communication sites, in which the protesters began to answer the question “For what are you protesting?” So Hajibur collected these answers, and composed a song that he intended to publish through his account in “Instagram”, so the security forces raided his house and forced him to delete it. , in a ridiculous and useless move, considering that the song had spread all over the place.
This song gave Iranians a platform to express their suffering and aspirations, from “dancing in the street” and “kissing the beloved without fear”, to the desire for “a normal life”, “an economic system outside the grip of the state” and “not having to go to their paradise” mandatory”.