On Sunday, his lawyer tweeted that the singer has been barred from leaving the country for six months and stands accused of “propaganda against the system” and “inciting people to violent acts.” Last week, Iranian state media reported that Hajipour had been released on bail. Her friend, Shadi, said that she listens to the song on repeat and cries when she is home alone and her 8-year-old daughter is at school. “Shervin has put all the sorrow of a nation in this song,” she said. She doesn’t protest much herself, but the song has emboldened her to take off her hijab in public spaces - in the car, at the shopping center, when she picks her son up from school. When she goes out, she said, it feels as though everyone is humming the song. “I listened to the song about 100 times and kept crying.” The protester was playing “Baraye” as people drove by and honked in solidarity. She recently saw a young woman who had cut her hair short in protest - as large numbers of women around the world have done in solidarity - holding up her fingers in a “V” sign, Ziba said. All the feelings of being inferior at work and in the society. “All the things I hadn’t been able to do. It was as if all my cries of my past 30 years were being shouted by Shervin’s voice,” she said. “The first time I heard it, I felt a sense of amazement. Sitting in an early morning traffic jam in central Tehran, a 38-year-old woman named Ziba said that the song has provided a sense of unity among Iranians, evoking both joy and anger in a short amount of time. “It really stands out for having been a song that was beautifully vocalized by this musician, but that was ultimately written by people at large.” “Ultimately, what it calls for is sort of this longing for an ordinary life, bringing together these threads for justice and freedom in Iranian society for all,” she said. Past protest movements in Iran have also made use of songs, including “Yare Dabestanie Man,” or “My Grade School Friend,” which was written at the time of the Islamic Revolution and intoned in reformist protests decades later.īut no other uprising has had such a singular anthem, said Nahid Siamdoust, an assistant professor of media and Middle Eastern studies at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of “Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran.” But the cry for the rights of women and girls quickly morphed into something much bigger. Iran’s widespread protests were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini following her arrest and brutal handling by Iran’s morality police for allegedly failing to cover her hair properly and wearing pants that were too tight. The Iranian pop singer Arash played “Baraye” during a packed concert in Canada as the audience sang along. In the diaspora, the anthem has taken on a life of its own - remixed, covered and sung at protests from Los Angeles to Europe. In Karaj, near Tehran, protesters played the song and chanted “Death to the dictator!” and “Woman, life, freedom!” In an Iranian classroom, students wrote the lyrics to “Baraye” on the wall.Ī popular video circulating online shows Iranian high school students standing without hijab, their backs facing the camera as they hold hands in front of a whiteboard and sing the song. A receptionist at an English school, she said that schoolgirls are running an anti-hijab campaign, using the song as a driving force behind their movement. People around her - teachers, mothers, young girls - play the song constantly. Like others, she gave only her first name, Armita, for fear of retaliation by the government. “All around me, people were listening to it feeling misery and pity.” “I got goosebumps,” said a 26-year-old woman in Tehran, describing her experience of hearing the song.
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