The 34-year-old singer-songwriter, whose music melds classical Iranian music with more modern pop and jazz melodies, was scheduled to perform in Kuala Lumpur February 18. But Malaysian Culture Minister Rais Yatim announced that the concert had been canceled because it did not mesh with the country’s religion and culture.
“The government will not allow the concert because it [is] not appropriate in terms of religion, culture and the country’s cosmopolitan nature,” The Star quoted Yatim as saying.
Namjoo, who has lived in the United States the last three years, responded to the revocation of his permit on his website with an accusation that the Islamic Republic was behind what Malaysia did. “I am indeed disappointed to lose the opportunity of visiting my fellow Iranians and other music lovers in Malaysia,” Namjoo said. “I am further disappointed to find that certain anti-cultural and anti-artistic elements can use their methods of threats and intimidation to hinder peaceful artistic activities.
“My work is always concentrated on musicality, poetry and melodies. Any interpretation beyond that is the responsibility of those who have ill intensions towards art. It is obvious that elements of the Iranian regime do not fear me but my audience who are among the masses of young people who have risen against totalitarianism and dictatorship.”
He said he hoped that “all human beings will be free to express themselves without intimidation and fear of persecution by a small fundamentalist minority.”
In 2007, The New York Times dubbed Namjoo Iran’s Bob Dylan, which highlighted his “playful but subtly cutting lyrics” about his life growing up under Iran’s Islamic regime.
It was Malaysia’s conservative Islamic party, the Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS), which reportedly pushed for a ban on the singer. There was no indication of any involvement by the Iranian government.
“His presence in the country will offend Muslims, as he is known to have ridiculed Islam and the Qoran in his past performances,” PAS youth chief Nasrudin Hassan Tantawi said in a statement.
Culture Ministry officials said there had been an oversight in granting the concert permit in the first place. They denied the cancellation was due to pressure from Muslim hardliners, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.
In 2009, while Namjoo was living in California, an Iranian court sentenced him in absentia to five years in jail for mocking the Qoran in a song. The Iranian Qoran News Agency said at the time that the singer maintained he was the victim of an “unauthorized release” of his work on the Internet.
Agence France Presse reported that in September 2008, Namjoo apologized in a letter addressed to his mother, the clergy and the Iranian people for having recorded the song and said he had never intended it to be released.
Namjoo told the San Jose (California) Mercury News last year, “Any time the situation permits, I will return. The Iranian regime is not a monolith. Right now, there are people within it who can be respected, and there are people who are just generally mad.” He also said, “My poetry is a poetry of protest for this time.”
Namjoo was born in 1976 in Torbat-e Jam in northeastern Iran. One year later, his family resettled in Mashhad, where he grew up. When his father, Mohammad Hossain Namjoo, passed away, the junior Namjoo was only 12 years old. It was then that his family encouraged him to begin music lessons. Namjoo took classical Persian voice lessons and continued taking music lessons until he was 18 years old.
In 1994, the Iranian musician was admitted to study music at the University of Tehran. Three years later, in 1997, Namjoo quit the music program after a conflict with some faculty members who wanted to put him through more years of traditional Iranian music practice, repeating what he felt he had already learned before coming to the university.
Namjoo left Iran in 2007 and was a visiting fellow at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, between mid 2009 and mid 2010. He is currently on tour, with his next two concerts scheduled for February 25 in Seattle, Washington, and February 26 in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Namjoo’s songs, which have received millions of hits on YouTube, fuse Eastern and Western musical traditions with Farsi word play.
Namjoo’s website is: http://www.mohsennamjoo.com/