What Is Persian Popular Music?

It is important to specify what is meant by the term “popular music,” because, like much popular culture, Persian popular music is not only ill defined but also often carries a pejorative connotation among classical musicians, ethnomusicologists, and other scholars as the Other in a high/ low artistic continuum. Although certain Iranian classical musicians attempt to create rigid categories to distinguish what constitutes classical and popular music, the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl more accurately states that “the distinction between classical and popular music in the framework of Persian musical culture is not always easy to grasp” (1992, 157). He adds that the Persian terms for and categories of classical and popular music “seemed…to be used mainly by musicians of the classical tradition in order to denigrate the rest” (1992, 157). Nettl stands as the only ethnomusicologist to attempt a serious investigation of the topic of popular music, as an adjunct to his larger study of aspects of the classical music system (radif). He suggests, “[Classical music] is a system with an internal definition and is thus self-limiting. Perhaps we may then be justified in considering and labeling what is left, if we also subtract music in a definitely Western style as well as certain religious musical phenomena such as Koran chanting, as Persian popular music” (1972, 219).

Although Persian popular music does constitute to some extent a blurred genre, Nettl’s characterization falls short of adequately defining the phenomenon. For one thing, there is more than one genre of Persian popular music. One might look, for example, to Iranian contexts in which as long as the language of the particular musical production is Persian, the majority of Iranians will identify it as Persian popular music. In an Iranian context poetry and lyrics overshadow music and occupy a position unimaginable in Western society. This covers a wide range of musical output, including recent productions by young Iranian groups such as The Boys and The Black Cats whose rap music is clearly imitative of American productions and contains both Persian and English words, as well as the more classically oriented tasnif sung by vocalists such as Marzieh and Ellaheh, two well-known singers of the older generation. Both Marzieh and Ellaheh perform classical tasnif as well as newer classical songs that have become popular and other types of music that can be considered popular. This latter tradition of singing, to the accompaniment of a variety of traditional and Western instruments, is being carried out in southern California by a newer generation of vocalists such as Shakila, Mo‘in, Sattar, Shahla Sarshar, Fayezeh, and Ahmad Azad. The economic dynamics of survival requires many of the performers of classical music in southern California to also perform popular music, known as shad (happy), as many of them make their principal incomes from personal appearances at weddings and nightclubs, where such music is requested. Interestingly, some of these newer singers and groups are performing older popular songs from the mardomi tradition in updated versions.^[6]

As space does not allow for a purely musical analysis, I define Persian popular music, or musics, as (1) urban music, (2) primarily in the Persian language (although occasionally another major language found in Iran, such as Gilaki, Azeri Turkish, or Kurdish, is used), (3) that captures the imagination, attention, and devoted following of a large and diverse audience. Thus it is the consumer and the audience member, as well as the context, that define the meaning of “popular.”^[7] In contrast to classical music, vocal music dominates virtually all of the popular music genres, although an occasional reng from the mardomi tradition, such as shateri, may also be included. Further complicating the study of what may be considered classical or popular, certain classical artists, such as Golpayegani, became “popular” in the view of certain members of the classical establishment through radio, television, films, and nightclub and concert appearances.^[8]

Two important genres of Persian popular music that will not be discussed fully here also deserve mention. In the 1940s and early 1950s frankly Western types of music with Persian lyrics appeared. Songs such as Jamshid Sheibani’s renditions of Persian-language tangos and the Jolly Boys’ 78 rpm Columbia recording of “Atal matal” (syllables used for nursery rhymes) to the tune of “Bell Bottom Trousers, Coats of Navy Blue” were representative of the genre.^[9] A revolution in this style of Westernized music occurred in 1954 when the popular music icon Viguen sang “Mahtab” (Moonlight), inaugurating a new style of Persian and Western fusion, largely composed outside of the dastgah (modal) system and using only Western instruments. Viguen still performs widely in southern California, and among Iranians he is known as the “King of Jazz” (soltan-e jaz) (Zinder 1992). No history or analysis of popular music in Iran can afford to omit mention of the song “Mara bebus” (Kiss Me), which enjoyed phenomenal success and into which some segments of the public read political meaning beyond the overtly sentimental lyrics. Any historian describing and analyzing Persian popular music must also address the phenomenal career of Googoush, a vocalist and entertainer of true world-class talent. Googoush began singing in the 1960s and swept all before her. Her meteoric rise to fame in films, television, and her still-popular recordings recall the career of Frank Sinatra, and many Iranians reverently refer to her simply as “The Queen.” Googoush is arguably the most popular entertainer in Iranian history.

Western music was not the only source of inspiration for popular music production in prerevolutionary Iran. The vocalists Jebbeli, Tajik, and, in the beginning of her career, Pouran sang many songs that were either direct copies of Arabic or, more rarely, Indian popular songs, or an attempt to emulate that style. This alarmed many Iranian nationalists. Compared to the Westernized production, this genre of popular music enjoyed limited popularity. The political scientist Mehrzad Boroujerdi wryly observes, “Today, in the closing years of this aging century, the West and modernity have replaced the Arabs and Islam as the favorite scapegoats of the Iranian intelligentsia” (1996, 179).

Many well-known vocalists of the older generation such as Ellaheh, Delkash, Pouran, and Iraj can be designated cross-over artists, performing with equal ease in classical and popular contexts. They often performed at large weddings and in fashionable nightclubs, and their recordings were top sellers. Therefore, in the Iranian case, there are several types of popular music, and they may be conceived along a continuum of musical content that ranges from that considered a legitimate portion of the classical dastgah system to that which contains increasing degrees of Western musical elements, such as instrumentation, harmony, counterpoint, vocal technique, and melodic and rhythmic patterns. The extreme is a style of music that is totally Western musically but with Persian lyrics. Musically, popular music exhibits some of the characteristics that Nettl identified, and which I would call a blurred genre. This is why, for purposes of this chapter, the consumer and the context of performance largely define what constitutes “popular” music. It is true, as Nettl points out, that most Iranians do not seem to make the clear-cut distinctions between popular and classical that, according to him, classical musicians make. Such distinctions by nonmusicians often take into account the literary quality of the lyrics, the context, and the particular vocalist. Most important, the “consumer” may patronize the live performances and purchase the recordings of a wide variety of music—Persian classical, popular, and folk music and various forms of Western classical and popular music. As the sociologist Bennet Berger sagely observes, “Everybody knows (or should know) that real life is usually more complex and subtle than the analytic categories and other abstractions that social scientists must use to make generalizations” (1995, 69). Nettl’s sampling of musical tastes in Tehran in 1969 demonstrates that, along a continuum of educated to uneducated, and young to old, certain trends in musical preferences could be discerned. But by no means could he discern or predict any specific preference according to age or economic or educational group (Nettl 1970, 1972, 1992), demonstrating that it is analytically dangerous to essentialize audiences or musical categories. And, most important, most Iranian consumers of music happily listen to a wide variety of musical forms rather than confine their consumption to a single genre.