Protest music thrives in Iran, three years after young woman’s death sparked grassroots uprising

Nahid Siamdoust: This song happened pretty soon after the uprising. And what made it the song that spoke for so many about this movement is that its compilation was a very democratic process. Shervin Hajipour, the young musician, the song’s meaning is for the sake of, and so, you know, what this movement is for. He chose those from a hashtag, actually called #Baraye, where thousands of Iranians went on Twitter to write about what they cared about for this movement. And so he collected those and compiled them into the song. Part of the lyrics are for dancing in the streets, for a simple smile, for the environment, for endangered species, for all these things that the Iranians had come out into the streets to protest the government.

Toomaj Salehi was probably the most prominent musician for this movement. He had a song about a year before the movement called “Soorakh Moosh” (“Rathole”), where he warned the Islamic Republic and its officials and all of its apologists to find ratholes and hide because this movement was coming for them. And so in many ways, his rap was prophetic. And this song, even “Shalaw,” which means “whip,” he’d produced it about a couple of months before the movement, but in the song, they’re talking about women taking off their headscarves and Justina, who’s a rapper who ultimately had to leave Iran because of the power and force of her feminist lyrics, she sings along with him. And they’re, again, warning the Islamic Republic that this time, there was a phrase during the lead-up to the revolution afterwards, which said … When they imposed the hijab 40-some years ago … saying “either you put on the head scarf or you get a you know smack on the hand.” And so they turned that around to say to the clerics, “This time it’s my hair that’s going to smack you in the face,” so this song also became very representative of this movement.

The Iranian authorities have had a very difficult time shutting down social media. Social media has appended the kind of control they had over this space prior to, let’s say, the mid-2000s. Iranians have been very, very prolific at producing music, and it’s completely out of their control because there are satellite TV stations that pick up this music on the internet that is produced inside of Iran and elsewhere and boomerang them back into Iranian households. And, you know, Iranians are avid, avid music listeners and producers. And so it’s basically impossible to silence. 

This song is very explicit. It just says, “take off your headscarf.” And in the music video, Mehdi Arahi is inside Iran, where he’s produced the video again. You know, in the video, we see these women dancing and taking off their headscarves. And he says, “Put your beautiful fragrance into the air by taking off your headscarf.” It really changes the scene. It brings so much goodness. You know it’s very explicit. And, he, like some of these other musicians that we’ve discussed, like Toomaj Salehi and Shervin Hajipour was imprisoned for having produced this song and kept it for nearly a year after he was released.

For sure, some of them more than others. Toomaj Salehi, the rapper, was tortured badly, and his imprisonment was probably the most severe, but yes, they do end up paying the price. 

This is a song every Iranian knows. It’s more than a century old, dating back to Arif Qazbini’s time during the first constitutional revolution in Iran. And then became very popular again, leading up to the 1979 revolution and throughout the uprisings in post-revolutionary Iran. And now this was a real event when Parastoo Ahmadi live-streamed this concert, because the woman’s voice, solo voice, is still not permitted in the Islamic Republic, and, you know, she produced this concert at a time when parliament was discussing really severe hijab laws, and the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was actually actively against those laws. In the end, those laws didn’t go into action. But at this very moment, when the politicians were discussing and clamping down even harder, Parasol Ahmadi released a concert that went viral, singing all these songs, many of them spanning a century-long freedom movement in Iran. The lyrics speak about tulips sprouting from the blood that Iran’s youth have had to spill to gain these freedoms. 

No. As a matter of fact, she was also wearing a somewhat revealing dress. She was as she would want to be, imagining this other world where you could be a woman and sing as you wish and entombed this other world that Iranians could inhabit. 

I believe it played a significant role in fostering sentiments around this protest movement and uniting Iranians in their endeavor to create a free and prosperous Iran, one that offers opportunities for its youth. That’s why these older songs continue to play a role, as they are intergenerational songs. Some of them are very new, but some of them also intergenerate, and so Iranians really bond together around these songs. Music became very much part of the fabric of protest and part of these demands. And the way we see that today is, you know, very recently in September of 2025, we’ve seen the Islamic Republic allow for concerts that we’ve never seen in Iran before, very much sort of out in the public, still no women solo singers, but, you know, out in public allowing women to be without hijab in the audience, dancing to the music … these concerts are pretty astounding, and I think it really speaks to the fact that music was so much part and parcel of these, has been of these protest movements, that allowing freedom over music is sort of giving a nod or giving an acknowledgement to the demands of Iranians. 

I think it was really the people’s demands and the musicians’ amplification of them that united people and pushed the boundaries of some of those demands and requests. And we see this in the way music was able to highlight the role of the minorities in Iran, whether they’re ethnic minorities or women, which are part of the minority because of Iran’s legal structures. The way in which Baluchi and Kurdish rappers had a role to play, or musicians had a role to pay, the way in which you know this very internet intersectional international movement picked up on you know Chilean and anti-fascist protest song to point to this human endeavor, not just the Iranian, but to sort of place Iran within this larger continuum of human beings trying to achieve freedom and justice in the world. The music really elevated the demands of Iranians.

There’s so much going on in the region as well in terms of geopolitics, but if I were to look at the music, I think it’s hard not to see a very bright future for Iran, right? Because you see the voices of people at large, you see, the youth, but also, you know, older people, everybody uniting around these messages, hopeful messages for life. These are all messages signaling that Iranians want to live a good life, they want to live a free life, and they’re all coming together to dance in the streets. I mean, this is such a joyous movement, too, despite all of the bloodshed. So, it’s very hard not to see a very bright future for Iran, if the people who’ve come around these movements and uprisings were to have a say or were to lead Iran into the future.