All-woman band in Iran struggles to break through All-woman band in Iran struggles to break through BANDAR ABBAS, Iran, Sept 18: The men in
the audience clapped and the women
ululated as the band finished singing: it
would have been commonplace except the
venue was in Iran and the group on stage
were all women.
The catchy rhythmic music they played that
balmy night is known as “bandari”.
Its lyrics are from ancient folkloric
songs, passed down the generations and
familiar to many at the concert in an
amphitheatre in the southern port of
Bandar Abbas.
Only this time, it was being performed by
women in front of a mixed crowd.
“It feels as if you have been seen at
last” by “a new part of society,” said
band member Noushin Yousefzadeh, who plays
the oud, the Middle Eastern lute.
“All that training has paid off at last.”
Dressed in traditional clothing, the band
was taking part in a state-organised
festival to showcase “Persian Gulf music”
and, as well as singing, also played their
instruments.
Before long, the audience was ecstatically
singing along with the four-piece band,
reports AFP.
Such public expressions of joy are usually
frowned upon by officials in Iran, which
has been under strict Islamic rule for
more than 40 years.
Formed in late 2016 after a conversation
at the beach between two of the women, the
band is called Dingo, which in the local
dialect refers to the first wobbly steps
taken by infants.
The show — staged last year — was only the
second time they had performed in front of
a mixed audience.
The first occasion was at the Shiraz Oud
Festival in July 2018.
“These festivals are a great opportunity
because in normal circumstances we cannot
sing in front of men,” said drummer Faezeh
Mohseni.
When performing for all-female audiences,
Mohseni sings solo.
But, informed only a few days before the
festival that they had been selected and
would be singing to both men and women,
the band hastily re-arranged its routine.
“We had to spend all those days rehearsing
so that all of us could sing in chorus,”
said Malihe Shahinzadeh, who plays the
pippeh, a type of local drum.
Public singing by women is not a clear-cut
affair in the Islamic republic.
No law specifically forbids it, according
to Sahar Taati, a former director at the
music department of Iran’s Ministry of
Culture and Islamic Guidance, known as
Ershad.
Nonetheless, most clerics believe that the
sound of female singing is “haram” — or
forbidden — because it can be sensuously
stimulating for men and lead to depravity,
she added.
Secular music is generally frowned upon by
Shiite clergy, who see it as entertainment
that distracts from religion.
Its ban, decreed soon after the 1979
Islamic revolution, was gradually lifted,
firstly for “revolutionary” music, meant
to galvanise troops in the 1980-88 Iran-
Iraq war.
Then, the emphasis was put on traditional
Iranian music, in contrast to western
variants deemed “decadent” by the
authorities, who waged a war against
“cultural invasion”.
After moderate Hassan Rouhani was elected
president in 2013, succeeding
ultraconservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
staging musical events became somewhat
easier.
There are, however, still a myriad of
restrictions.
Ershad must approve concerts and it
remains almost impossible for a female
singer to perform alone, except in front
of other women.
But “women can sing to mixed audiences if
two or more women sing together, or a
female solo singer is accompanied by a
male singer whose voice is always at least
as strong as hers,” said Taati.
That’s how a Persian adaptation of the
musical “Les Miserables” was
performed in Tehran in the winter of 2018-
2019, with female solos supported
by the voice of another singer in the
wings.
The members of Dingo, who are all in their
mid-20s to mid-30s, had tried a
number of times to arrange performances
for mixed audiences themselves.
But it was difficult to coordinate and in
the end “we just gave up”, said Negin
Heydari, a former member, who plays the
kasser, a smaller drum usually played
together with the dohol and pippeh.
So now, whenever authorities arrange
festivals and shows like this one in their
home town, they apply and hope they will
be selected, even if it means not knowing
until the last minute if they have been.
But, the exhilaration of playing for mixed
audiences is worth all the uncertainty and
long hours of practice — in the “Dingo
room”, a sound-proof den in the courtyard
of one of their parents’ homes.
Heydari described how happy her husband of
10 years, Sassan, said he was to be able
to see her perform live on stage at last.
The four musicians, two of whom have jobs,
feel fully supported by their families and
have many dreams for their band, from more
performances inside Iran, to playing at
venues abroad.
“We want to make Dingo international,”
said Mohseni, while Shahinzadeh is eager
for the rest of the world to hear the
music of her hometown.
Their dedication paid off when they won a
jury prize for their performance at last
year’s festival, where they wore colourful
outfits with sequins and gold embroidery,
traditionally worn in southern Hormozgan
province.
Since the concert, Negin Heydari has left
the band because of “artistic
differences”, and her place has been taken
by guitarist Mina Molai.
Meanwhile, the Covid-19 pandemic, which
has hit Iran particularly hard, has left a
mark on Dingo’s progress in good and bad
ways.
It has dampened the band’s hopes of
recording an album and prevented
rehearsals but also given rise to new
ideas.
“The period of confinement has been an
opportunity for me to research the music
of our region and also to improve my
playing technique,” said Shahinzadeh.
“Up until now, we’ve only been doing
covers of the bandari folk repertoire, but
now we’re thinking of creating original
pieces,” she said.
Despite the religious limitations, female
solo singing can still be heard
by men in Iran, especially if you catch a
taxi in the capital, Tehran.
You may well come across a driver who
plays Googoosh, a pre-revolution pop diva,
who reemerged in North America in 2000
after years of silence in her homeland.
Another might reach for a USB memory stick
with songs by the late sisters Hayedeh and
Mahasti, icons of the music scene before
1979 who are buried in California, in the
United States.
You could also hear Gelareh Sheibani, a
young songstress based on the US west
coast whose tunes are finding their way to
Iran over the internet.
That’s unless your cabbie prefers the
Paris-based soprano Darya Dadvar, one of
the few women to have sung solo in front
of a mixed audience since the revolution.
|
Popular
SPORTS NOTES
TRADE NOTES
|