About Dark and Depressive Iranian Songs Before the Revolution ... & The Golden Era

By Reza Ganjavi

Iranian pop music before the Revolution was phenomenal in quality. It produced extraordinary singers, composers, lyricists, musicians and arrangers. Varoujan was one of the geniuses of that era. Another remarkable musician from that generation was Armik, the Iranian-Armenian guitarist, with whom I studied. Many of the golden hits from those years are still widely listened to by Iranians decades later.

There was also a strong current of sorrow, darkness, loneliness and despair in that period, promoted by several singers Dariush Eghbali, Farhad Mehrad and Fereydoun Foroughi. They helped fuel discontent, but offered nothing as a solution instead of what could be interpreted indirectly politically as being against the regime, and even then, these people did not propose any solutions. They continued nagging about their damn sorrow, without any meaningful proposal or fundamentally, without bringing any change to their own lives to free themselves from the sorrow, e.g., someone who is depressed should not drink alcohol, but to continue to drink and shout about being sad, does not help the society. An artist can be helpful for the society but worship and promotion of sorrow are toxic for the society, in my view.

Put some of the titles next to each other: City of Sorrow. Prisoner. Dead End. Sorrow of Loneliness. Prison of the Heart. The Lonely Man. Tired. Captive of the Night. The Grey Week. Scream Under Water. Celebration of Sadness. Collapse. Catastrophe.

DARIUSH EGHBALI

This video says it all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0WOhU2OBfM -- It's a shame that this happy crowd get flooded with this lousy depressive lyrics of a man who gave so much promotion to sorrow pain and misery. 

Dariush is the most famous promoter of pain and sorrow and depression in Iranian history, in my view. Shahr-e Gham (City of Sorrow), Zendooni (Prisoner), Bon Bast (Dead End), Faryad Zir-e Ab (Scream Under Water), Jashn-e Deltangi (Celebration of Sadness/Longing), Soghoot (Fall/Collapse), Gelayeha (Complaints/Laments), and other songs built around loss, darkness, confinement and grief.

Zendooni is especially direct. Freedom loses its meaning when there is no happiness; life becomes a prison; a sad person can remain alone even among millions; the image of the wounded bird leads all the way to death as release.

Then there is Khooneh (Home). The song begins with memories of a once-beautiful family home. A flood comes, destroys the house, kills the father, drives the mother mad, and leaves the narrator wounded and exhausted among the ruins. Most of the song is about devastation.

Jashn-e Deltangi is another example. Its emotional world is separation, breaking down, death, crying, torture, mourning, wounds, fear and destruction. Even the title turns sadness and longing into a 'celebration.'

FARHAD MEHRAD

Farhad gives us Mard-e Tanha (The Lonely Man), Jom'e (Friday), Khasteh (Tired), Asir-e Shab (Captive of the Night), Hafteh-ye Khakestari (The Grey Week), Shabaneh, and Avar (Ruin/Rubble). Darkness, exhaustion and confinement return again and again.

Jom'e is especially bleak. Friday (the weekly day of rest in Iran) appears dressed in mourning. Black clouds drip blood instead of rain. The narrator cannot breathe, the day seems endless, sorrow overwhelms everything, and a person becomes tired even of himself.

Asir-e Shab goes further: a person dying under a wall, chains of sorrow, closed doors, darkness, madness, a fading light and existence suspended between life and death. Hafteh-ye Khakestari spreads the gloom across an entire week: boredom, black spaces, an ominous owl, a grey sunset, decay, and finally a Friday with nothing new to say.

Farhad had a distinctive voice and artistic identity. Many listeners hear social and political meaning in these songs, especially Jom'e. I am writing here about the emotional atmosphere itself: darkness, exhaustion, suffocation and despair, repeated over and over, which I find sickening and toxic.

FEREYDOUN FOROUGHI

Fereydoun Foroughi was another catastrophically depressed artist. Zendoone Del (Prison of the Heart), Gham-e Tanhai (Sorrow of Loneliness), Tangna (Constriction/Impasse), Gereftar (Trapped/Captive), Mahi-ye Khaste-ye Man (My Tired Fish), and other songs return again to loneliness, imprisonment, exhaustion and emotional defeat.

Zendoone Del gives sorrow a permanent home inside the heart. There are tears, a dark fate, night, complaint to God, and the bleak sense that tomorrow will change nothing. Gham-e Tanhai is even more explicit: loneliness becomes a sorrow as large as the world, a hidden corner feels like a prison, tears fill the eyes, sorrow knocks on the heart, and loneliness makes a person old.

IRANIAN PRE-REVOLUTION POP MUSIC GOLDEN ERA

Iranian pop before the Revolution was one of the great periods of Iranian popular music. Varoujan and other first-rate composers and arrangers made timeless recordings. Some of the best compositions were given to the first tier singers like Googoosh and Sattar. Many of those songs are still widely heard by Iranians decades later. Googoosh was a performer since she was a child, alongside her comedian / actor father. Her first husband Mahmood Ghorbani was a cabaret owner and promoter who “discovered” and promoted many singers who became super stars, including Dariuush whom Ghorbani says he rescued from a gutter as a drug addict. 

Armik came from that same generation of musicians. His early career was rooted largely in jazz. He reportedly went to Berklee in Boston. The public statement is that after encountering flamenco in Spain in the 1970s, he moved increasingly toward that tradition, although his recordings and performances in Iran prior to the revolution were not flamenco themed. They were far more complex and jazzy than flamenco can ever dream about. He had his own style which no other guitarist to date can mimic. You can hear some of his ingenious guitar works on Dariush’s Cheshme Man for example.

Armik was Iran’s top guitarist, hands down, and played on every record where they need the best of best performers. He was and is an enormously talented musician. Many of the Iranian great musical figures were Armenian-Iranian. Also when I was in Yerevan, I saw a lot of musical talent there. He also arranged and played guitar on Faramarz Aslani's debut album that contained the hit "Age yerooz beri safar".

Armik moved to Los Angeles and later became internationally successful as a Nuevo Flamenco guitarist and composer. His recordings also became major sellers in the New Age market and reached high positions on Billboard's New Age chart. I studied with him before that later success.

Iranian popular music also produced very high-quality work after the Revolution. Some of it was made inside Iran. A huge amount was made outside Iran, especially in Los Angeles, which became the center of the post-revolution Iranian pop industry abroad. The Los Angeles scene, often called 'Tehrangeles,' became a major production center for Iranian music, television and popular culture.

Los Angeles produced some excellent Iranian music. It also produced a lot of garbage. There seemed to be an endless stream of door-in, door-out singers: someone would suddenly appear, receive heavy promotion, release one or two albums, enjoy temporary fame, and then disappear. In many cases it felt like a money-making scheme for producers, with the singer gone as quickly as he or she had appeared.

These days, to my ears, it often feels as though 90 percent of new songs produced in Iran use the same chord progressions and recycle the same melodic shapes. The musical vocabulary feels narrow. One song blends into the next. Compared with the invention and range of the best pre-Revolution recordings, much of the current output strikes me as uncreative and limited in scope, including the Iranian music produced in Los Angeles, with exception of some remarkable singers.

The flood of disposable singers also makes the achievement of the earlier generation clearer. Most of the top Iranian singers, judged by concert revenue, are still the old-timers.