Authors: Mark LeVine
After Khomeini’s death in 1989, Iranian society gradually opened up during the Rafsanjani and particularly the Khatemi governments of the next decade and a half. Increasing numbers of young people became disaffected with the cult of martyrdom and complete self-sacrifice. Instead of the religious idea of
bi-khodi,
or self-annihilation, being the dominant mode of religious expression, the more liberal idea of
khod-sazi,
or individualistic self-help, began to take hold among young Iranians disillusioned by the waste of war. Some of them were led to metal as an alternative value system rather than just as a form of musical escapism. As Armin Ghaouf explains, “What makes heavy metal so important are the eight years of brutal war—twice the length of America’s involvement in World War II. I remember the missiles coming to Tehran, so wearing a metal or Maiden T-shirt with a tank on it is very relevant to me. We didn’t know if we’d live through the war. And even today, at twelve years old we are still forced to learn how to use AK-47s and to defend against chemical weapons.”
With such experiences, it’s no wonder that death metal became popular among young people. But how do they make it part of their everyday lives on the streets of Tehran? They do it by blasting music in their cars until the
basij
pulls them over, or by wearing skimpy headscarves until the
basij
force them to pull them completely over their scalps; and by wearing their iPods or Walkmans, which, especially for women with their mandatory headscarves, has become a favorite way to tune out the existing regime and into one’s own world while walking down the street. Some even tag the logos of their favorite metal bands on walls across Tehran—whether in their bedrooms or on the street—claiming their bit of territory from a society in which they feel they have little stake.
Finally, Iranians connect with their music through the Internet, not just in English but in Farsi as well (while only one in sixty people in the world speak Persian, the language ranks fourth in frequency of use in Internet blogs). As Behnam explained about
Tehran Avenue
’s focus on creating a Web-based community of artists and fans: “Increasingly we’ve chosen to go through the cyberworld because of the ban on live shows.” But, I wondered, how do you do music without live shows? Behnam thought for a second and agreed, “Yes, it’s like walking without legs. Music is supposed to bring people together and create communities—real, not virtual. If you can’t do that, then something is missing.”
But even without the chance to perform in truly public settings (and therefore in front of large crowds), metal musicians argue that playing metal gives them confidence for life, and a safe place to work out feelings of aggression and hopelessness that otherwise would lead to more-unhealthy activities (from violence to drug use), which are commonplace in Iran today despite the regime’s self-image as a paragon of Islamic virtue. As Armin puts it, “Metal is like an asylum. A mental asylum that rejuvenates you and gives you hope.”
New Gods and Old Martyrs
“When you breathe in our country, it’s political,” admitted Ali Azhari. “But even so, we’re not doing stuff to harm the system, we’re just trying to survive.” Ali was trying to convince me of his innocent intentions. But it was hard to take his protestations of innocence very seriously when he was wearing a T-shirt that read,
YOUR GOD IS DEAD.
Ali’s T-shirt, but not his argument, made more sense when he introduced his new project, Arthimoth. “Arthimoth is a newborn god I created myself, a combination of an ancient Persian name with the Greek goddess Artemis [the goddess of the wilderness and fertility]. I thought that this is the time to re-create ancient gods as a legacy of our fathers. Musically, we try to remix very old, traditional Iranian village music with contemporary music and especially extreme metal. In other words, we root the metal in our culture.”
Creating other gods, however metaphorically, is certainly a good way to get into trouble in Iran—even more so when it’s obvious. As Ali and Armin admitted, “We chose this metal in order to communicate. We write on behalf of the kids.” Yet if you watch Ali in the recording studio, Baphomet shirt drenched with sweat as he records a brutal vocal that sounds—and looks, if the grimace on his face is any indication—like it’s coming from his bowels, it’s hard not to take his theology seriously. Certainly the government does—to a certain degree.
As we were talking, Ali loaded the video for “Baptize” onto his computer. Ali is rightfully proud of the video because it demonstrates his skills as a metal songwriter, guitarist, and filmmaker. It’s among the most disturbingly powerful music videos I’ve ever seen, riffing on the futility of violence first brought to metal cinema with Metallica’s groundbreaking video “One” (which depicts a horrifically wounded soldier—without arms or legs, blind, deaf, and mute—using morse code to tap out a message to his doctors to kill him). But “Baptize” takes the message of “One” to a far higher degree of intensity than Metallica’s innovative video—both musically, as the chromatic minor riffs of the song have enough of a hint of the unsettledness produced by the
koron
to keep the listener constantly off balance, while the drums never settle down into a beat you can groove to, and visually (something I wouldn’t have imagined possible before seeing his video).
Ali uses the word “baptize” to indicate how Iranians are forcibly submerged, body and soul, in a system in which there is no room for independent thought. The video’s lead actor is a man, mostly naked, who is led, seemingly willingly, to a chair. Immediately upon sitting down, he has the top of his head sawed off; his brain is shocked with electrodes and then nibbled on by a rat while another man screams into his ear from an occult-looking book (Ali actually used a Hebrew book because using the Qur’an would have really gotten him into trouble). The images move back and forth between shots of the band headbanging in unison and Ali singing as the rat eats the man’s brain. Finally, as the song ends, the “doctor” sews the man’s scalp back on and he stumbles away, like a zombie, into the world.
Ali’s studio was raided while he was completing production for the video. The original masters of the video were confiscated, and he was questioned by the secret police. But he managed to hide another master copy and upload the video onto YouTube, where he’s received comments from both Israel and Lebanon with the same message: “Don’t let religion ruin your art; ‘keep it brutal.’” It’s a sentiment that’s shared by many Iranian metalheads. A member of Iran’s hottest young metal band, Tarantist, put it this way: “Metal is in our blood. It’s not entertainment, it’s our pain, and also an antidote to the hypocrisy of religion that is injected into all of us from the moment we’re born.”
From Boom Boxes to Mobile Phones: Tehran’s Streetcorner Public Sphere
Bahman, rhythm guitarist for Tarantist, explained that in Iran the idea of a unique Iranian identity is so strong that “anything that looks like a foreign culture is frowned upon. Especially if it comes from the U.S.” Yet hip-hop, which even more than heavy metal is identifiable as a product of the “Great Satan,” has had an easier time of it in Iran than its hard-rock counterpart (the baggy clothing preferred by rappers does have the advantage of being more Islamically acceptable than the tight leather pants, T-shirts, and menacing-looking jewelry that define metal style). Indeed, rap has played a central role in creating a broad sense of community against the grain of the regime’s wished-for Shi’i utopia, very often without arousing the suspicion that it’s doing just that.
The Iranian rap scene is still small compared to the much better established hard-rock scene, but its rapid growth is described by many metalheads with envy. That doesn’t mean that rappers are off the government’s radar screen; several were arrested around the time I was in Iran, including one of the country’s leading rappers, Hich-Kas, for being too overtly political. But in general, hip-hop in Iran is more tolerated than heavy metal, as long as it doesn’t deal directly with sexual issues or take on the government.
While it has strong working-class and lower-class roots, many rappers and fans are from the wealthier segments of society. No matter their origin, most Iranian rappers have chosen the genre both because of its connection to worldwide musical trends and because of rap’s history of political and social criticism. One of Iran’s rising female rappers, Salome, explained: “The true meaning of hip-hop culture [is] a lot deeper than it looks on the surface. It’s become much more eclectic than it was previously, and much more out in the open. As important, it’s become Persianized instead of just copying the West. For example, I only use natural instruments, without samples [the digitally recorded bits of instruments or other songs that have long been the foundation of hip-hop production] in my songs.”
Salome is half Iranian and half Turkish, and makes her living as a designer since doing so as a rapper is out of the question. (That she can make a living as a fashion designer in the Islamic Republic says something about the complex politics of cultural production in Iran today.) When we met in the office of
Tehran Avenue,
she was dressed, fashionably, in black, including her headscarf, which she kept adjusting as we spoke. A connoisseur of alternative hip-hop in the States, Salome is a fan of Dead Prez, Immortal Technique, and Paris. She raps in Persian and Turkish on top of beats influenced by these artists, yet unlike her heroes, she goes out of her way to define herself as apolitical: “I’m not political, just social, so I’ll do songs about our rage at all the Iranian rappers who say meaningless stuff imitating commercial American rap, stuff that has no connection to our culture.”
When rappers in the Arab/Muslim world say they’re “social, not political,” it means they’re not critical of their own government; foreign governments are another matter entirely. After the United States invaded Iraq, Salome wrote a rapid-fire, nationalistic America-basher called “Petrolika.” But while she doesn’t mind performing abroad (as she did at the Intergalactic Music festival in Amsterdam in 2006), in Iran “I want to stay underground. I don’t want to do interviews, to make that sacrifice, particularly being a woman.” Rapping is not high on the Ahmadinejad list of approved feminine vocations.
Iran’s male rappers are equally aware of what lines they can publicly cross without getting arrested or otherwise harassed. This was clear from a visit to one of Tehran’s best—but still underground—hip-hop recording studios. The studio, which has no official name, is located in a wealthy neighborhood, but—as usual—it’s in the basement so that neighbors, at least those outside the building, won’t know it’s there (although the steady coming and going of young men in hip-hop clothing, or with instruments slung over their shoulders, must surely indicate that something un-Islamic—from the regime’s point of view—is going on there). As soon as I entered, I had a case of déjà vu; its smell and look reminded me of almost every other studio I’ve been in. Cigarette smoke filled the air, mixed with the odor of fried fast food, while chips and empty soda cans were scattered on tables and the floor.
It was here that I met two of the leading rappers on the Iranian scene, Reveal and Hich-Kas. Reveal grew up largely in the UK and is currently completing a degree in Persian language at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Hich-Kas, whose name means “nobody” in Persian, is a home-grown rapper who chose his name specifically as a play on rappers who try to blow themselves up with pompous-sounding names. “I just wanted to show that somebody that calls himself ‘nobody’ can say big things.” Both rappers are critical of the current situation in Iran and the problems their fans face, but neither was very comfortable talking explicitly about politics.
Reveal is one of the most educated rappers I’ve ever met, but for sheer grandeur of vision the prize has to go to the eighteen-year-old Tehran rapper Peyman-Chet. “The ‘chet’ means ‘stoned,’” Peyman explained to me as we sat in a tiny rehearsal/recording studio on the third floor of a working-class neighborhood of central Tehran. This was not the Tehran I had grown used to. The streets were narrower, the buildings older. Peyman chose his stage name not because he likes drugs, but rather as a play on the way rap and drug culture are mixed in the States—“It’s quite the opposite in Iran, where it’s more techno and rock and dance music that attract the drugs. I chose the dope imagery to focus on addicted people.” Drugs are in fact a huge problem among Iran’s youth. According to a 2005 UN report, the country has the highest addiction rate in the world, especially for heroin and related drugs. “Natural and synthetic heroin, even synthetic crack; we got it all in Iran,” a member of the metal band Ahoora admitted. “Yeah, we have an abundance of everything here—drugs, oil, money—everything except freedom,” another band member chimed in.
Ahoora and Peyman are seemingly from opposite sides of the tracks. Peyman practices in a dingy studio with old equipment, Ahoora has a state-of-the-art Pro Tools recording system in the villa of the guitar player’s father, a wealthy pistachio merchant whose faux-1920s Hollywood-style home boasts an intricately carved wood-paneled barroom that must have seen its share of fabulous parties in the Shah’s day. Peyman has a new Yankees cap, Ahoora’s lead guitarist has five electric guitars (two Jacksons, one Ibanez, one BC Rich, and one I’d never seen before), three Marshall amps (a JCM 2000, a Valvestate 2000, and a G30R), sixteen effects pedals, and an eighteen-button effects board hooked up to a rack-mounted digital effects system.
Of course, being a rapper, Peyman doesn’t need any of that stuff. All he needs is a pen, a notebook, and a few hundred dollars to record a song that will be downloaded by thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people all over the world soon after he uploads it to his site. And while his name parodies hip-hop’s fascination with dope, his clothing is as authentic as it can get when you’re living 8,000 miles east of New York: baggy pants, sports jersey, baseball cap, and a big gold chain. “I wear baggy clothes because when people see me it makes them think. It shows that I want change,” he explained.