My Schoolmate: Protest Music in Present-Day Iran

The article examines the role of sounds, and particularly of music, as expressive means of protest that stemmed from the disputed 2009 Iranian presidential election. On the background of the cultural history of music in Iran, semiotic analysis dwells on slogans, on the classic anti-establishment song ‘Ya¯r-e-dabesta¯nı¯-e-man’, as well as on underground and diaspora contemporary Iranian music. The article concludes by characterizing the musical protest scene of present-day Iran as a paradoxical consequence of governmental censorship of music in the country; simultaneously, it stresses the unresolved and ambiguous link between such musical protest scenes and that which took shape during the 1979 revolution.