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Jazz Mirrors Iran, Part One: Friedrich Gulda’s “Teheran”

Imagine this: A tenor saxophone and bass mimic in sound the pace of rush hour walkers. A trumpet, sounding like a car horn, pops in and out, pulsating along with the beat of the drummer, whose brushes on the snare create an interplay that brings to life the image of a bustling urban city.

No cobblestone streets or the smell of Parisian bread; no green leaves overhanging narrow passageways or the sound of French in the background. This is not Europe. It’s Iran that is being depicted in cool jazz tones.

Of course, the recent (and usual) media heyday over nuclear developments, economic sanctions, and other such political riff-raff distorts these images. Iran remains a country held victim to misrepresentation and lazy awareness.

Old-School Hip-Hop Meets New-World Messages: An Interview with Australian-Muslim Rappers The Brothahood

In a music industry where mainstream rap is dominated by lyrics bragging about drugs and “bling,” finding tunes that are driven by a relevant message is like looking for a four-leaf clover: rigorous and time-consuming. Once found, though, it is unlike any other in a monotonous field where one might as well pass as the next.

Melbourne-based social conscious hip-hop group The Brothahood is just such a clover. Previously featured in Hannah Magar’s “We are Egyptian” as part of Aslan Media’s #Jan25 in 25 Music Videos series, the group features four young and talented rappers- Moustafa, Timur, Hesh and Jehad- who came together in 2006 to “use hip-hop as a tool to smash down stereotypes and misconceptions” while still “maintaining hip-hop’s core essence: taught and intelligent rhythms.” The members’ backgrounds are diverse. Timur is of Turkish descent, Hesh is Burmese, and brothers Moustafa and Jehad come from a Lebanese family. But what brings them together is their love of their religion, their passion for social justice, and the fact that they see themselves just as much Australian as any other person in the land down under.

Monday Mixtape: The Brothahood’s Jehad Dabab

Music hardly exists in a vacuum. Like an interconnected web, each tune and each track released to the world came from somewhere and leads to somewhere else. At Aslan Media, we recognize that very few albums come to us without influence, and it is those artists that walked the road before who shape the styles and expressions of the musicians we profile.

To show that music is an expression that knows no physical, cultural, societal or economic boundaries, Aslan Media is beginning a new regular series called Monday Mixtape. Artists profiled on this site share with us the tracks that inspire and influence who and where they are as music artists. The genres covered by these playlists are limitless, as are the artists they include. Whether situated in the Middle East or beyond, they carry universal messages found in every region of the world.

We begin our Monday Mixtape series with Jehad Dabab (better known to his fans as Jehad or “G”), a founding member of the Melbourne-based Islamic and socially conscious hip hop group The Brothahood, profiled here by Aslan Media. “I’ve always loved hip hop growing up,” Jehad told Aslan Media Arts and Music editor Safa Samiezade’-Yazd. “I loved the lyrics, I loved the meanings, and I loved the way they used the wordplay and the poetry- it was just really inspiring.”

Moroccan Rappers Breaking With the Country’s Past

It started out as a debate on Facebook. But as their Tunisian and Egyptian neighbors rose up against their rulers, a group of young Moroccan activists came together in the spirit of revolution and began to discuss how they could bring democratic reforms to Morocco.

The answer seemed quite clear: Through reforms enacted by King Mohammed VI.

Protesters took to the streets, declaring February 20 the day Morocco demanded that its king make “the necessary changes in the political system to allow Moroccans to rule themselves by themselves.” It was an unprecedented move to say the least, especially in a country where the head of state derives much of his legitimacy from his ancestry (He is a distant relative of the Prophet Muhammad and as such enjoys the title “Commander of the Faithful”).

Libyan Musicians Rage Against the Regime

February 17, 2011 marked itself as the day the music did not die. After 40 years of suffocating under dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s iron fist, protesters followed their neighbors in Tunisia and Egypt by taking to the streets and risking their lives in exchange for liberation. When his grip over Benghazi fell to rebel fighters, radio airwaves blossomed and the country’s once-stifling music scene, dominated by the singular voice of Muhammad Hassan, Gaddafi’s handpicked singer, became a free-for-all forum that also found itself in the center of history of a new Libya.

In cartoons, music, and murals, Libyans have been, for the past year, rewriting their stories in ways previously outlawed under one of the Middle East’s most totalitarian regimes. Whether it was to express anger, to unite differing factions, to keep morale, to remember the fallen, or to celebrate victories, music embedded itself into Libya’s fight for independence by giving its revolution a soundtrack and its protesters a voice.

Noted Dissent: Iranian Band Kiosk’s Lead Singer Arash Sobhani

Nuclear reactors are hardly the thing that poetry is made of, let alone Iranian culture. Yet in a country where politics infiltrates into every aspect of daily life, everything becomes an act of opposition. This is the state of a hijacked society.

It's also the state from where Arash Sobhani, lead singer and lyricist for the hit Iranian underground band Kiosk, finds not only artistic inspiration, but also his own musical form of civic duty. Known best for both their synergy of blues, gypsy and traditional Persian music and their satirical lyrics, Kiosk's tracks are humorous, but cut-throat, crossing thresholds between generations, economic backgrounds, cultural boundaries, even censored distribution as a voice to the rupturing dissent against a government that has held Iran hostage since its revolution in 1979.

Formed in Tehran in 2003, the band is heralded today as one of the most preeminent bands to emerge from Iran's underground (and illegal) music scene. As the group reaches its ten-year mark, it has a lot of success to boast: five CDs, international concerts on four continents, and a team still intact with its original members. Their first album, Adame Mamooli (Ordinary Man), released in 2005, made them the first Iranian underground band to hit iTunes. "Esgh e Soraat" (Love of Speed), the title song of their second album (released in 2007) blasted through the airwaves as the first underground Iranian track to be released in the West. In 2008 the band won the Best Blues Band Award from the World Academy of Arts, Literature and Media. In 2010 they released Seh Taghtireh (Triple Distilled), the first live album to be released by an Iranian underground band.

Yet all the accolades and pioneering moves don't "necessarily mean anything, because somebody else would have just done it at a later time," says Sobhani, who finds more pride in the fact that the band, now above ground, has been able to grow its following by remaining an independent band that doesn't buy into the ideas of fame or money. Aslan Media Arts and Music editor Safa Samiezade'-Yazd had a chance to chat with Sobhani on the phone about the band's origins, its latest album Natijeh e Mozakerat (Outcome of Negotiations) and the responsibilities he feels as an Iranian-American artist to bring awareness to the current situation gripping his home country.

Aslan Media: What inspired you to start Kiosk?

Arash Sobhani: I was involved in various music acts in Iran underground and some that were not underground, playing as a guitarist or songwriter. The problem was back then — and the problem still exists, I just don’t have to face it myself anymore — to release an album or to get permission to perform live, you have to go through this loophole and through different stages of getting approval from the authorities in the Ministry of Islamic Guidance. What they do is basically butcher your lyrics or poem or whatever you have, so they make sure that you’re not doing anything that they find intriguing. It’s funny, like you’re not allowed to use the word “red” because it reminds you of blood, and that’s violent — stupid things like that. I would get really frustrated because as a lyricist, as a songwriter, you end up just being able to write about the weather and flowers and things like that.