Iran finds itself defined in the world’s eyes by war and unrest.
Since late February, the country has been at the center of a rapidly expanding conflict. with thousands dead. Major oil infrastructure has come under threat, and shipping through the Strait of Hormuz—one of the world’s most important energy chokepoints—is being disrupted.
The war comes on top of another catastrophe. In January, the regime carried out the deadliest internal purge in the history of the Islamic Republic. Human rights group reports estimated that more than 30,000 people were killed.
I’m determined not to let these events—or the brutal Islamic regime that has ruled Iran for close to 50 years—define or color Iran for me. I’m not Iranian. I’m Palestinian. But I feel a great sympathy for the Iranian people. Just as Palestinians have been captured by a radical jihadist government—Hamas—Iranians have been under a similar thing since the Islamic Revolution. In fact, the jihadists in Palestine have long been supported and propped up by the radical regime in Tehran. Palestinian dissidents and Iranian dissidents therefore have a lot in common.
Palestinian dissidents and Iranian dissidents have a lot in common.
During the January protests, I started listening to Iranian music. I asked my followers on Twitter—some of whom are Iranians—to supply me with some of their favorites. I’ve also been digging through YouTube, Spotify, Wikipedia, and various obscure blogs—some well over a decade old!
Why? Well, I wanted to expand my horizons. Seeing Iran as defined by repression, by theocratic extremists, or by jihad is a disservice to the people of Iran and the complexity and vibrancy of their nation. Iran is a country with poets, singers, guitarists and visionaries. And I felt the urge to learn more as a way to take a stand against the Iranian regime, which has tried to redefine Iran and to force a fundamentalist Islamic identity on the country.
I love this phase of musical discovery. It makes me feel almost like a teenager again—finding a new frontier of artists, and mapping it out with my ears and my head.
Over weeks, I discovered Mohsen Namjoo’s jagged and thoughtful songs, Kiosk’s satirical and wry rock, the jazz-inflected noodlings of 127, the raw force of Hichkas, the grief-stricken immediacy of Shervin Hajipour’s ballads, and, from a different register altogether, the austere beauty of Mohammad Reza Lotfi’s meandering setar improvisations. But among all these discoveries, one record stood out, for multiple reasons: Kourosh Yaghmaei’s Back from the Brink. Pre-Revolution Psychedelic Rock from Iran: 1973–1979.
Back from the Brink is overflowing with sensuous, funky and slightly angular rock music. It blends in well alongside Soft Machine, early Pink Floyd, or King Crimson. Indeed, there’s plenty that can tie it to more recent strands of psychedelia such as Animal Collective or the Flaming Lips. The sonic fingerprint has touches of the whimsicality of the Canterbury scene, perhaps interspersed with a little more sunshine and sadness.
Yaghmaei’s music blends in well alongside Soft Machine, early Pink Floyd, or King Crimson. And even with more recent strands of psychedelia such as Animal Collective or the Flaming Lips.
Born in 1946 in Shahrud and raised in Tehran in a Zoroastrian family, Yaghmaei came to music first through the santur—a 72-stringed hammered dulcimer often used in Persian classical music—before teaching himself electric guitar as a teenager. By the early 1970s, he had begun developing the mannerisms of playing and songwriting that would catapult him to the pinnacle of 1970s Iranian rock fame.
The core personnel playing on Back from the Brink were drawn from the Tehran music scene around Yaghmaei. Most prominent of all are his brothers: Kamran Yaghmaei, the compilation’s principal electric guitarist, whose playing gives many of these tracks their bite and looping riffs, and Kambiz Yaghmaei. Kourosh himself handled lead vocals and guitar and was also a keyboard player. Around the brothers rotated a cast of bassists, drummers, pianists, and keyboardists.
There are plenty of global influences seeping through the arrangements. Blues, prog, sunshine pop, the drifting haze of 1960s psychedelia. None of it feels borrowed, exactly. None of it feels shoehorned in, either. The music is fully metabolized and idiomatically fluent. Indeed the playing is verging on virtuosic at points—both when Kamran Yaghmaei’s lead guitar takes over, and as when the Vox Continental organ enters the picture.
There are plenty of global influences seeping through the arrangements. Blues, prog, sunshine pop, the drifting haze of 1960s psychedelia. None of it feels borrowed, exactly.
Songs like “Aabere Shab” and “Havar Havar” conjure environments: late-night streets, private rooms, memories of landscapes, futures half-imagined and half-lost. A standout track is the wah-guitar and horn section-driven Bachehaye Khoobe Koocheh, which is both melodically catching and rhythmically lolloping. Then there’s the Piper At The Gates of Dawn-esque ambience of “Niyayesh”. And the sizzling hi-hat-driven groove of “Entezar”.
In wartime, there is a tendency to encounter another country only through images of suffering and destruction. What listening to Yaghmaei restores is a sense of Iran as a place of glorious artistic ambition and cosmopolitan experimentation. Back from the Brink insists that Iran is more expansive than the regime that rules it and more than the wars and repression in which it is trapped.
The Islamic Revolution interrupted this musical world, forcing itself over the heads of the majority of Iranians who did not participate in Khomeini’s revolutionary protest movement, and many of whom were not even devout Muslims, and so found the new regime strange and alienating. Like so many artists of his generation, Yaghmaei found himself pushed into a new Iran in which rock music was no longer publicly permissible. His music was banned, his career curtailed. The horizon that had made these songs possible abruptly narrowed.
Unlike many Iranian musicians who resettled outside the country—often in North American cities like Vancouver and Los Angeles—Yaghmaei remained in Iran. This required enduring decades of censorship and partial silence. He recorded when he could, releasing work only fitfully. In an interview with Vice Magazine in 2016 he said:
“Now that I look back, I am glad I did not bribe anyone or bow to pressures, but lived all these 37 years with honour. I believe even in an unequal battle, resistance is preferred to giving up”.
It’s a harsh thing to imagine: to see your country taken over by repressive religious extremists who silence and marginalize you. For Zoroastrians like Yaghmaei, and other non-Muslims, Iran was rapidly Westernizing in the 1970s. In many ways, this had been a liberal society. Its artists and musicians were exploring the same veins as Western musicians. And yet it was still taken over by theocratic thugs and plunged into darkness.
Unlike many Iranian musicians who resettled outside the country—often in North American cities like Vancouver and Los Angeles—Yaghmaei remained in Iran.
For Europeans and Americans, if such a thing were to happen here, we would face the same dilemmas as the Iranians did. Stay put, stay in your home, stay in your country and push for freedom. Or go into exile, and live a more normal life. This isn’t an inherently easy choice. There isn’t a right answer, or a wrong answer.
I am hoping for a brighter future for the people of Iran. One where rock music is normal again. One where censorship, repression, and theocracy are a distant memory, and where religion is fully separated from the state apparatus. I hope it comes very, very soon.
Listen To:
1/ Kourosh Yaghmaei — “Gol-e Yakh”
Yaghmaei’s best known track: stately, melancholic, and immediately memorable. Probably the clearest entry-point into why Yaghmaei became the emblematic figure of Iranian psychedelic rock.
2/ Kourosh Yaghmaei — “Havar Havar”
A little more propulsive and groove-led, with the band’s rhythmic elasticity right up front.
3/ Kourosh Yaghmaei — “Aabere Shab”
One of the most atmospheric cuts in the set, all nocturnal drift and suspended feeling.
4/ Kourosh Yaghmaei — “Bachehaye Khoobe Koocheh”
Wah-guitar, horns, and a loose, lolloping swing.
5/ Kourosh Yaghmaei — “Niyayesh”
For the more spectral, psychedelic side.
6/ Kiosk ft. Mohsen Namjoo — “Morgh-e Sahar”
This works as a bridge between older Iranian song traditions and more modern dissident/alternative sensibilities. Kiosk are a Tehran-formed rock band known for wry, socially charged lyrics.
7/ Mohsen Namjoo — “Toranj”
Namjoo’s 2007 album Toranj is one of the landmark recordings in his catalog.
8/ 127 — “Arman Hayeh Dorosht”
127 emerged from Tehran with a sound rooted in Iranian melody but filtered through jazz, rock, and off-kilter pop writing.
9/ Hichkas — “Anjām Vazife”
Hichkas is one of the foundational figures in Iranian hip-hop.
10/ Mohammad Reza Lotfi & Gorouhe Sheyda — “Dastgah Shour: Pishdaramad”
A grave, spacious piece of setar playing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjIbEf1FZA8
