IRANIAN EXPATRIATE ARTISTS’ PROJECTS GIVE VOICE TO COUNTRYMEN
By Reed Johnson
Los Angeles Times
-et-iran-culture11-2009jul11,0,6402001.story
July 10 2009
Singers such as Andy Madadian are singing in support of his
homeland. His Farsi-English version of ‘Stand by Me’ has struck a
chord on YouTube.
Watching the impassioned crowds surge through Tehran’s tense streets,
pop singer Andy Madadian wanted to take action. But how?
An Armenian native of Iran who has lived for three decades in
Los Angeles, Madadian avoids direct involvement in his homeland’s
politics. But as Iran was plunged into crisis last month by a fiercely
disputed presidential election, the man known as "the Persian Elvis"
wanted to send a musical message of sympathy and support to his
countrymen.
So it was that on June 24, working with A-list producer Don Was,
rock singer Jon Bon Jovi and his longtime guitarist Richie Sambora,
Madadian recorded a propulsive cover of "Stand by Me," the old Ben
E. King classic, with lyrics in Farsi and English. Although "Stand
by Me" — or, if you prefer, "Ma Yeki Hastim," which translates as
"We Are One" — is no protest anthem, it appears to have struck a
chord, judging by its combined 600,000 hits on YouTube and other sites.
"You can say that the mere fact that I’m singing is making a political
statement, because my music is banned" in Iran, Madadian said —
adding, with a smile, that his work still circulates there via
pirated copies.
"I think the youth in Iran, more than anything, they want to have
the freedom of thought, which is Internet, which is cinema, which
is music," he continued. "And we’re trying to say, ‘We hear you,
we sympathize, we’re trying to get it to you.’ "
In recent days, Iranian expatriate writers, poets, artists, filmmakers
and performers, a large number of whom make their homes in Southern
California, have been riveted by the situation unfolding in their
homeland. A few have spoken out publicly, denouncing the regime of
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Others, like Madadian, have responded to the turmoil by making work
that expresses a more generalized solidarity with Iran’s people,
conveying messages more subliminal and elliptical than overt.
In one prominent effort, a group of expatriate actors and musicians,
led by Iranian British punk-rock-hip-hop artist joined to make a
song and video titled "United for Neda." The video includes graphic
images of violence and injured citizens. Assembled from cellphone
video footage, which gives it an urgent, vérité feel, the video
pays tribute to Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose shooting
death, captured on video and posted on YouTube, turned her into an
instant emblem of the protests. Written and produced by Taylor, the
song opens with the pointed verse, "Lord, another day goes by/And I
pray that they all stay strong and try to make it through the hate,
all the pain and the lies."
In Iran, China and other countries where free speech is a dodgy
proposition at best, semi-anonymous Twitterers and bloggers may be
willing to post their opinions for all to see. But Iranian artists,
whether still resident or in exile, often have taken a more circumspect
approach, drawing on the richly metaphorical, centuries-old traditions
of Persian poetry, music and art to express themselves, while relying
on technology to broadcast their ideas to audiences beyond the reach
of censors.
Embedding controversial ideas in metaphors and symbolic gestures
has become an important strategy during the 30 years since a Muslim
theocracy overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah and established the Islamic
Republic of Iran.
"Iran is a very metaphorical society. Its films, its arts, its poetry
speaks in metaphors and symbols, especially now," said Reza Aslan,
the Iranian American author of "No God but God: The Origins, Evolution,
and Future of Islam" and a radio and TV commentator.
To expatriate artists and writers, the stirrings of dissent that
erupted in Iran this summer have been visible for some time. Friction
over the subordinate status of women, the regime’s repressiveness
and the social and economic scars left by Iran’s eight-year war with
Iraq in the 1980s are among the recurrent themes that have surfaced
in contemporary Iranian film, poetry and art, both at home and abroad.
Those currents have been subtly present in Iranian contemporary art,
as reflected in the show "Iran Inside Out" on view at Manhattan’s
Chelsea Art Museum. One section of the show dealing with gender and
sexuality is revealingly titled in the exhibition catalog as "From
Iran to Queeran and Everything in Between."
Signs of the variety and contradictions bubbling under the surface of
Iranian society also have been manifest in contemporary cinema. The
flowering of Iranian art film that began in the early 1990s, during
a period of relative cultural liberty, produced landmark films by
such internationally feted directors as Abbas Kiarostami ("Taste of
Cherry"), Mohsen Makhmalbaf ("Kandahar") and Jafar Panahi ("The White
Balloon"). Makhmalbaf has been serving as a spokesman of Mir-Hossein
Mousavi, who was a candidate in the presidential election, the results
of which he has denounced as fraudulent.
Although rarely containing explicit political content, many of
these films lent themselves to a multiplicity of interpretations,
including political ones. In "Taste of Cherry," for instance,
the main character’s attempt to enlist three strangers (a soldier,
a religious student and a university professor) in tossing dirt on
his grave after his planned suicide becomes a provocative meditation
on Iran’s social fissures, among other things.
Iranians are not only proud of their film culture, Aslan said, but
also are "very film-literate" in being able to read between the lines.
"It’s an audience that’s very adept at reading the movies," he
said. "Many poets in Iran have learned to speak almost a secret
language, where political issues are talked about in allegorical ways."
Sussan Deyhim, an Iranian dancer, composer and vocalist who lives in
the U.S., agreed. "When people can’t speak prose, they rely on poetry,"
she said. "I think that’s what’s happening in Iranian cinema."
Deyhim was among the performers on the "United for Neda" video, along
with L.A.-based actor Shohreh Aghdashloo, who plays the doomed title
character’s aunt in "The Stoning of Soraya M." Deyhim performed on
the soundtrack of "Stoning," a fact-based drama by Iranian American
director Cyrus Nowrasteh about an Iranian woman who is stoned to
death after her husband falsely accuses her of adultery.
Deyhim said she believed that, despite the government’s ongoing
crackdown, the recent protests had given many Westerners a more
nuanced view of Iranian society and culture. The protesters’ courage
under fire, their sophisticated use of Twitter, flip-cams and other
mass-communication tools, and the glimpses that the demonstrations
gave of resolute women presented an image of a cultured, cosmopolitan
society, in contrast to the monolithic, drably fundamentalist picture
of Iran that Western media usually depict.
"We’ve gotten an amazing, amazing look at what Iran is really about in
the last couple of weeks," she said. "Whatever has happened for the
last 30 years is in no way representative of Persian culture. It’s
just a dark moment."
As events in Iran unfold, some Western artists who’ve been drawn into
Persian culture through their work are looking on with a heightened
sense of involvement. L.A.-based film composer John Debney, who
wrote the score for "The Stoning of Soraya M.," said that while
researching the region’s music he has come to greatly admire its
"tremendous depth of emotion and soul and sophistication." He now
lends his name to the cause of abolishing the practice of stoning.
"Whether it be Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan, I’m hoping we can get to
a place one day where we in the West can [have] an open sharing of
our very divergent cultural aspects," he said.
Other Western artists are filtering the Iranian situation through
the prism of past, parallel struggles in their own societies. Joan
Baez recently made a new version of the U.S. civil rights anthem
"We Shall Overcome," in which she sings some verses in Farsi. She
dedicated it to the people of Iran.
"I think you’re witnessing a kind of culture globalization," producer
Was said. "Everybody watches the same news, drives the same cars. When
anybody’s civil liberties are being stomped on anywhere in the world,
it affects everybody."
And whether such expressions of commonality are avowedly political
or partially shrouded in subtext, the sentiments appear to be coming
through loudly.
"I think what everybody shares in common," Deyhim said, "is their 200%
solidarity with the people of Iran who are standing for us."
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