September 01, 2017
About a hundred musicians gathered last month to complain that President Rohani has still done nothing to defend their right to perform at concerts.
A year after 600 musicians wrote Rohani objecting to increasing mistreatment of the music community and the illegal cancellation of concerts, nearly 100 of them gathered to voice their concerns.
This gathering was held last Wednesday in Tehran’s House of Music, an unofficial union site for Iran’s musicians. They complained that conservatives in a number of cities continue to cancel concerts that have legal permits.
The Ministry of Culture issues permits for concerts. However, the Judiciary often works with law enforcement officers to cancel concerts that have legal permission.
The Islamic regime has never had a harmonious relationship with the music industry since the 1979 revolution. In the first decade after the revolution, popular music was banned, followed by periodic bans on musical education. After the Reformist took power in 1997, pop music returned, followed by jazz, rock, rap, R&B, techno and all subgenres of music in the western world. The conservatives could never contain the growth; both underground and legal music groups sprouted.
However, in the past year pressure on legal music has increased dramatically.
In the most recent case, the July 28 concert of veteran singer Shahram Nazeri and his son Hafez Nazeri in Quchan was shut down on order of the city’s prosecutor. Last week in Yazd and Karaj, Hamed Homayun’s and Fereydun Asayi’s concerts were canceled at the last minute on order of their prosecutors.
The 100 musicians who gathered in Tehran asked Rohani, “Isn’t the cancellation of concerts a disregard for the rights of artists?”
In the past week, 500 musicians, activists, and artists also signed a petition calling on the Ministry of Culture to identify the culprits behind the cancellation of ministry approved concerts across the country and to slap them with charges of “disrupting law and order.”
The signatories also call for the establishment of a security fund for the artists to offset their losses.
Conservatives have taken to closing down concerts only hours (or even minutes) before they are due to begin, maximizing the inconvenience to fans as well as performers. They seem to take more delight in causing inconvenience to fellow citizens than in adhering to the their avowed strict standards.
Parvaneh Salahshur, a member of the Majlis Culture Committee has called for the Majlis to act against the arbitrary concert cancellations.
She called for an investigation why government bodies that have no jurisdiction over cultural matters are interfering in the responsibilities of the Culture Ministry. She, the Judiciary and prosecutors are responsible for providing security for concerts and have no jurisdiction over approval or cancellation of these events.