Iranian Hip Hop: Voice of Resistance

Hip-hop music is increasingly the voice of underground protest against Iran’s puritanical restrictions and political repression. It’s been nicknamed Rap-e Farsi, a word-play on the music and national language. Farsi, a poetic language, is particularly conducive to rap. The Islamic Republic is now estimated to have thousands of rappers, both amateur and professional.

 

On weekend nights, rap music is often heard blaring from the cars of young Iranians cruising Tehran’s streets, even though both the music and cruising are officially discouraged. At least 60 percent of Iran’s 78 million people are under the age of 35, so hip hop’s appeal has political implications too.

 

Iranian hip hop is partly a byproduct of the cultural liberalization under former President Mohammed Khatami. But it has grown significantly since the disputed 2009 presidential election and subsequent eight months of protests. Many popular lyrics now rant against the theocracy’s injustice and hypocrisy.  Since widespread arrests and trials virtually silenced the opposition Green Movement, rap has been one of the limited ways to express popular discontent.

 

Yas, a thirty-year-old Tehran rapper, is considered the pioneer of Iranian hip hop. He began rapping in 2003. He and others say they were first influenced by American rap, including Tupac Shakur and Eminem, but without the “gangsta” tone or references.

 

"Hip-hop began in America, but Iran has had one of the longest traditions of poetry of any in the world. Poetry is in our blood. If he (Tupac) could sing about his life and pain and his culture, why couldn't I do the same thing in my own language, and that's where it all began," Yas said in a 2008 interview  by Modiba in The Huffington Post.  In one song, he basically warned the regime that the young would not give up.

 

In a song entitled “Merciless World,” or Donya ye Birahm in Farsi, he also rejects extremist ideology and tactics.

Other established names in Iranian Hip Hop include Shahin Felakat, Reza Pishro and Zed Bazi.

 

But hip hop is not just the domain of Iranian men. Salome MC was Iran’s first female rapper. In a song entitled “Constant Pain of Mine,” she was boldly defiant after the 2009 elections, which the opposition Green Movement charged had been rigged to give President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a second term.

 

The rise of rap is a stunning reversal from the Islamic Republic’s early days. After the 1979 revolution, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini proscribed music as immoral for encouraging vice, lust and impiety. He also said it “dulled the mind.” He even compared Western music to a drug, which spawned the term “Westoxication.” 

 

Three decades later, Iran’s hip-hop artists dig into the failure of the theocracy’s utopian ideology. Hichkas, which is Farsi for “Nobody,” is a Tehran-based rapper whose verses are a portal to Iranian street life. In “God, wake up!,” or Khoda Pasho, he exposes Iran’s class divide.    

 

 

Saye Sky, a self-described lesbian rapper, is particularly bold. In a 2007 speech at Columbia University, President Ahmadinejad declared that Iran had no homosexuals. And gays and lesbians face extremely tough punishment, potentially including the death penalty, in Iran. But in her song Bidari, Saye Sky raps:

 

 

Many rappers have feared persecution, especially after their songs gained popularity. Fame – even underground – carries serious dangers. Despite their tenacity, Shahin Najafi, Salome MC and Saye Sky fled the country after their careers gave them more exposure among both the young and police.

 

Saye Sky lived in Tehran up until 2009 when she was warned that the government had tapped her phone, she told the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center. She released Bidari in Turkey. Salome MC released "Constant Pain of Mine" in Iran in 2009 under the alias Kalameh, which means “pseudonym.” In 2011, she too left the country. 

 

The lyrics of rappers in exile now tend to be sharper, while hip-hop artists still inside Iran go after the regime less directly, often as social commentary rather than open condemnation.

 

They also have to rely on informal social media rather than largely state-controlled or regulated media. Many Iranian rappers have posted on Youtube and online Persian radio stations like Radio Javan to share their music as well as specialist hip-hop websites such as www.rap98.com.  To ensure a wider international audience, Salome MC and Saye Sky have also translated their own lyrics into English.

 

Fusing courage with self-expression, Iran’s rappers have given resistance a new voice.