Intimating Dissent: Popular Song, Poetry, and Politics in Pre-Revolutionary Iran

• Published in: Ethnomusicology 2013-01, Vol.57 (1), p.57-87
• Main Author: Hemmasi, Farzaneh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Ambiguity; Anthropology; Beliefs; Business; Cognitive problems, arts and sciences, folk traditions, folklore; Ethnic music; Ethnic Studies; Ethnology; Ethnomusicology; Iran; Literary criticism; Meaning; Modernism; Modernist poetry; Music; Musical modes; Musical rhythm; Musicology; Poetic meter; Poetry; Politics; Popular music; Popular songs; Shamlu, Ahmad (1925-2000); Singers; Songs, folk songs; Violence
• ISSN: 0014-1836; 2156-7417
• DOI: 10.5406/ethnomusicology.57.1.0057

Here, Hemmasi discusses the political valences of musiqi-ye pap and modernist poetry, a style to which Ahmad Shamlu and a number of lyricists in the popular music industry were connected. He then examines the musicality of the poem "Pariya" and the ways in which musical setting and the popular music format altered the poem fragments retained in Dariush's composition. My answer to Dariush Eghbali's question of why the sung "Pariya" was banned while the original poem was not rests not on music's inherent ambiguity but rather on music's parallel capacity to render meaning more, and not less, specific. In the case of "Pariya" he argues, its popular music form disambiguated and publicized meanings, creating a more directly oppositional text than the original poem. He explores some of the ways music and poetry mediate between political beliefs and sentiments which, with the very real possibility of violence, must be guarded and, when enunciated, only partially revealed. His analysis focuses on the stylistic resources Shamlu drew on to produce an ambiguous yet palpably oppositional poem, and the new audiences, interpretations, and ultimately more directly communicated meanings Dariush's musical transformation opened for the text.