A
rapport from the underground of the worlds underground!
By Nassir Mashkouri
June/ 2006
www.zirzamin.se
Cultures
do not have the ability to evolve, renew or survive automatically. They should be
preserved and kept alive through vitalization of the cultural life. To create
this kind of vital atmosphere, it is increasingly necessary that the artists
create and express themselves in a free and democratic environment both
politically and culturally. It is the freedom of expression that evokes life
quality in the society.
At the same time the old
traditions must be preserved, it should also get updated and renovated by
creating bridges and intersections to exceed all the existing boundaries
between humans and their cultures, in order to create a multicultural society
that is able to give birth and develop possibilities for the new and
contemporary cultures and art forms that in it self creates new and exciting
conditions and refreshing coexistence for the next upcoming generations that
wants to live in a promising and vital cultural life. It only happens by
creating different kinds of cultural platforms for dialogs and discussions. It
is exactly what the new generation of musicians in
It was in the year
Today, after so many
years, we may consider this scene as a beginning of a new cultural movement. I
think we should also realize that this amazing young and some times confusing
music scene is not particular a solid music movement with a specific music genre
in the front but some kind of a cultural resistance face to face with the
Islamic government and it's anti western culture war. We normally call these
musical movements Iranian "Alternative" or "Underground"
music, just to differ from "Pop" and Iranian "Traditional"
music styles. But in fact, in a society like ours, controlled by only one
particular ideology, which in our case is the Islamic ideas and roles, any
other kind of music and art forms that is not fitted in the Islamic beliefs or
does not compromise with its norms will be put aside and ends up in the
underground world. What I am trying to explain here is that in Iran, due to
limitations, a wide rang of cultural activities both artistic and commercial
remain underground because they don't have the possibility to get connected to
their publics through the public services like TV or Radio channels. This makes
for an absurd situation that even in most of the cases our popular mainstream
music also becomes a member of our underground music community too!
It actually doesn't matter if the musicians have got the permission from the
"Cultural and Islamic guidance office" to publish their stuff or not,
they all remain underground and are punished if they don't stay down there
where they belong.
The fact is that every other art forms, musical expressions and different ways
of thinking that is not following the roles of Iranian government, is an
underground culture in
Our new alternative
scene is a post-modern art form, which shamelessly raids older forms of popular
culture and other disparate sources and reshapes it to fit the artist's
individual and national taste of today. It is interesting though that the most
of these artists showing fully respect to the Persian traditional musical
elements and it's older cultural ideas and
philosophies and it is only to reach out to their roots and their origin to
rise and identify them selves in this post-modern, global and multicultural
world.
But we must simultaneously remember the fact that our "Iranian rock music
movement" have never had the same cultural background, as it's western origin. They do not share the same rebellious
and some time the revolutionary philosophies that rock music carries with in.
Our rock music has never been about sex, drugs and rock & rolls and may
never be. It is simply because they have not gone through the same history with
the western rockers and all the rebellious music that they created and all that
partying that they gone through and still do. For that, we need freedom of expression,
which is a dream to us.
Our cultural mentality and artistic philosophy has been affected by our bloody
and horrible history that our country and our ancestors have gone through. Our
culture has always been oppressed by other cultures and powers so many times.
What We Iranian have learned through time is to defend and save what is left!
It is all about resistance to survive in order to keep our cultural identity a
live. Yes, this is what is happening today too. We have barrowed a fresher
blood from a greater and living culture and injecting it in to our mind and
soul just to give our culture another chance to survive. That's why our rock
music, exactly as our traditional music has always been, is all about resisting
and protection, not protesting and rebellion.
Our rappers are not some poor oppressed ethnic minorities or Afro/ American
gangsters from the ghettos of L.A that making it by
selling drugs just to realize their American dreams. The fact is that our
rappers are mostly youngsters from the middle-class families that are already
rich and wealthy. These guys don't know much about the roots of hip-hop culture
as a life style. This is just a fashion to them and a way to express them
selves freely. Musically, they have never been a DJ to find out what rhythm is
about because there have never been a club or a disco in
This new generation of musicians are product of a post
Islamic revolution era that forbids all kind of western music products. This is
a paradox that the Iranian youngsters are living in. They are prisoners in a
society that has surrounded them by outdated norms of religion, and in front of
them, a world that offers them freedom and a music history that gives them a
tool and the opportunity to choose how to express their thought.
This entire situation
has been created since the new communication tools like; Internet and satellite
TV channels become handy to middleclass population in
One thing is for sure;
these musicians are carrying the Iranian cultural heritage with all its
introspective philosophy and traditions and experimenting on the new elements
and possibilities and most importantly the freedom that the modern,
contemporary popular culture offers them.
This may be a beginning
of a new music era that builds it's own experiences
through the individualism and freedom that modernism has created and it also
has its roots in a culture that gives more importance to human spiritual life
than just materialistic desires. We maybe are witnessing the birth of a third
way of world popular music.
All right, as we all
know by now the Iranian alternative underground music scene is definitely
growing very fast. It is obvious today that this movement has created a very
tiny subculture in our Iranian middleclass and upper class big city life,
mostly in
This
alternative scene maybe is anti establishment, creative and some of the times,
it has that counterculture spirit too but there is more to it. Beside the
terror and oppression that these musicians are facing in their everyday life in
Iran, they also struggling to find their way up to be heard world wide. There
is a strong will in most Iranian alternative musicians to create the pure
Persian national and cultural identity in their music and this makes them also
an alternative to the world global music scene too. It is not easy to be a
musician of the third world in an underground scene under the worlds underground scene!
Once I was talking with one of our Iranian Rapper "Hich kas" and he
told me; "The third world is the Ghetto of the world and we (Iranian
rapper) are rapping in this ghetto and about our ghetto". He made me think
of the reason why rap music has become so popular in
But there is always hope in a country of paradoxes where the majority of the
Iranian people who are open for the modern and free world, are living their
life in an underground world with all that it means. As long as our musicians
and artists are fighting for their rights to create and express them selves out
of love, there will always be hope for change. They may have not got a stage to
play their music and they may never have felt the great feeling of being a rock
star but they have got World Wide Web as they playground and music as the
vehicle for their expression.
استفاده از
این اثر با
ذکر منبع بلامانع
است.
تمام
حقوق این سایت
متعلق به نویسنده
است