Inspiring the world

The events of the past three weeks, and the brutal and disproportionate (this is a gross understatement by the way) crack down of the peaceful demonstrations (through beatings, kidnappings, unlawful imprisonment, torture and murder of protesters) have shown the world a picture of Iran and its people that the world had not seen before. While on the one hand the brutality of the Iranian government an its illegitimacy has been exposed, the world has also seen the true image of the Iranian people: young, vibrant, brave and in search of freedom.

The people of Iran have inspired all the freedom-lovers of the world in an unprecedented way. Neda Agh Soltan, and all those other people who have been killed and imprisoned have become symbols for freedom and equality every where. The huge number of songs, poems, art work and painting that have been developed by non-Iranians in solidarity with the protest movement is a testament to this.

You know a protest movement has deep roots when it is immortalized in songs and art. Here, I would like to share some of this with you.

Before the elections:

Before the elections, the reformist candidates (Moussavi and Karroubi) used songs and video clips to galvanize their supporters. I particularly like this following video, used by Moussavi's campaign. It is a re-mix of an old, folk song, that talks about how "winter is over". Here are the lyrics in Persian, followed by the video itself.

سر اومد زمستون
شكفته بهارون
گل سرخ خورشيد باز اومدو شب شد گريزون
كوهها لاله زارن
لاله ها بيدارن
تو كوهها دارن گل گل گل آفتابو مي كارن
توي كوهستون دلش بيداره
تفنگ و گل و گندم داره مياره
توي سينه اش جان جان جا
نيه جنگل ستاره داره، جان جان، يه جنگل ستاره داره
سر اومد زمستون
شكفته بهارون
گل سرخ خورشيد باز اومدو شب شد گريزون
لبش خنده نور
دلش شعله شور
صداش چشمه و يادش آهوي جنگل دور
توي كوهستون دلش بيداره
تفنگ و گل و گندم داره مياره
توي سينه اش جان جان جا
نيه جنگل ستاره داره، جان جان، يه جنگل ستاره دار





After the elections

The enormity of the street demonstrations took everyone, especially the regime by surprise. On June 15, over 1 million people (some estimates talk of 2.5 to 3 million) people demonstrated on the streets of Tehran. On the early hours of that day, the student dormitories at Tehran University were attacked, and 5 students (although this was never officially confirmed) were killed. Later that day, as the demonstration was nearing its end, the Basij attacked people and 8 more were killed. On June 16th, the government staged a rally in "support" of Ahmadinejad where they reportedly had to bus people in from surrounding towns to make it look bigger (despite this, foreign reporters estimated the number to be around 10,000 at most). There, Ahmadinejad gave a speech in which he called the protesters "riff-raff" and "dust".

Amazingly, in the protests that continued over the ensuing days, people were holding out banners with a poem written on them, that addressed Ahmadinejad and his insults to the people of Iran. That poem has now been turned into a song, and there are at least three versions on youtube. The singer of only one is known, and he lives in LA. I have included all three videos, with the first having English subtitles of the song.










Revolutionary songs

I found this video really interesting. They have taken a very old revolutionary song (from 30 years ago), and superimposed various images of the protests. The main sentence in the lyrics is: "stand up, destroy the the enemy's fortress".




The latest song

This song, that just surfaced today, is by far the most professionally made song and video of the protests. It is by a group called Hypernova, who until recently were an under ground rock band in Iran. A couple of years ago they moved to the US (since their kind of music -along with most other liberties - is "forbidden" by the Iranian government).