The wildly popular Master Shajarian, a living legend of Iranian classical music, was performing with the Shahnaz Ensemble, under the direction of Majid Derakhshani. The following footage shows the audience singing several lines from Ey Iran...
May my life be sacrificed for the pure soil of my homeland
Since your love became my calling
My thoughts are never far from you
In your cause, when do our lives have value?
May the land of our Iran be eternal.
Following the disputed election of June 12, Shajarian demanded that the state radio-television of the Islamic Republic refrain from playing his music in protest at the regime's violent crackdown against demonstrators. 'I have always been on the side of the "dust and dirt"', Shajarian said at the time, using a derogatory phrase that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had employed on June 14 to describe protesters. The arch-conservative Keyhan newspaper, run by Leader Ali Khamenei's representative Hossein Shariatmadari, subsequently wrote that Shajarian had 'sold out his country.'
One of Shajarian's latest works, Tofangat Ra Zamin Begozar (Lay down your gun), is a thinly veiled indictment of the regime's actions:
Ey Iran has never been the national anthem of the country, although it played that de facto role for a few months between the victory of the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Neither the first official anthem of the Islamic Republic, Payandeh Bada Iran (May Iran Be Everlasting), with its religiously militant tones -- Our helper is the hand of God/He is our guide in this battle./Under the shadow of the eternal Qoran/May Iran be everlasting! -- nor the current anthem adopted in 1990 after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with its elegiac references to the Imam (Khomeini) and the martyrs of the revolution, have ever enjoyed the popularity of Ey Iran.
The song became an instant success from the moment it was written by Hossein Golegolab and Ruhollah Khaleghi in the aftermath of World war II. Its rousing melody, rooted in the notes of traditional Iranian music, its unabashed patriotic lyrics without any mention of religion except for the word izadi (divine), which is a pre-Islamic term from the Pahlavi language and Zoroastrianism, have turned Ey Iran into an anthem of opposition to the Islamic Republic. In the following footage, literally thousands of demonstrators chant the song in the streets of Tehran on June 18:
And in this video, violinist Shadmehr Aghilli, decked in appropriate green, plays the tune while spectators sing two verses from the song at a concert in July 2009 in the United States:
For those readers who have never heard the full song, here is a version by the fabulous soprano Darya Dadvar at a concert in Vancouver, April 2007. Notice how the audience spontaneously stands up once she starts singing:
As for Iranian national anthems, past, present, and future, I have developed a soft spot for Vatanam (My Homeland), particularly the following version by classical vocalist Salar Aghili. This 19th-Century song is the first ever national anthem of Iran and it was written by a Frenchman. But that is a story for another post...
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Ey Iran
Oh Iran, oh bejeweled land
Oh, your soil is the wellspring of the arts
Far from you may the thoughts of evil be
May you remain lasting and eternal
Oh enemy, if you are of stone, I am of iron
May my life be sacrificed for the pure soil of my homeland
Since your love became my calling
My thoughts are never far from you
In your cause, when do our lives have value?
May the land of our Iran be eternal
The stones of your mountains are jewels and pearls
The soil of your valleys are better than gold
When could I rid my heart of your affection?
Tell me, what will I do without your affection?
As long as the turning of the earth and the cycle of the heavens lasts
The light of the divine will always guide us
Since your love became my calling
My thoughts are never far from you
In your cause, when do our lives have value?
May the land of our Iran be eternal
Iran oh my green paradise
Bright is my fate because of you
If fire rains on my body
Other than your affection I will not cherish in my heart
Your water, soil and love molded my clay
If your love leaves my heart it will become barren
Since your love became my calling
My thoughts are never far from you
In your cause, when do our lives have value?
May the land of our Iran be eternal
(translation, with a few personal modifications, courtesy of Wikipedia)
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As much as I like the Ey Iran song but I think Vatnam is the most melodious and beautiful sounding piece.
ReplyDeleteWhat is this author talking about? Ey Iran is always played on Seda va Sima (Official Islamic Republic radio and TV). They play it all the time when they are announcing nationalistic achievements.
ReplyDeleteThey rarely play their own national anthem on state TV, but always play "Ey Iran".
The author has obviously never lived in Iran.
Thank you for your comment.
ReplyDeleteI still maintain that Ey Iran has become an anthem of opposition to the Islamic Republic.
Whether it has been played on Seda va Sima or not (a point which I don't touch on, by the way) is immaterial.
In response to the anonymous comment submitted previously about Ey Iran being played on Seda va Sima, another reader sent me an email rightly pointing out that Shajarian himself was regularly featured on state radio-television until very recently, when he was blacklisted.
ReplyDeleteWhat is and isn't acceptable on state television is constantly shifting. We'll have to see whether Ey Iran follows the same route as Shajarian or whether the government will try to co-opt it.
The regime has reacted to the color green, for example, in various ways. At one point, it even tried to 'regain' this opposition symbol by creating a group called the Alavi Greens. But since a few months ago, it has also led clumsy efforts such as turning the color green on the flag to some turquoise hue at Ahmadinejad's press conferences and repainting green and white curbside markings in Tehran streets to turn them black and white.
Dear sir,
ReplyDeleteBeing in the Barbican Centre for the maestro's concert, I can not validate your report of the night. What you hear in the clip is people, just audience who started to sing Ey Iran after the maestro left the stage.
The maestro sang two other songs upon audience request; The Bird of the Dawn (Morq e Sahar) and Join Us(Hamrah Sho Aziz). But Ey Iran was not sang by him and people started singing it on the way out of the hall.
This does not affect the rest of your post, which I read by joy and admiration.
Thank you very much for your account of the night and your kind words.
ReplyDeleteI think you misunderstood what I wrote (or perhaps I should have been more careful with my punctuation). I did not say that Master Shajarian sang Ey Iran. I wrote, as you explain with even greater detail, that it was the audience that sang the song spontaneously.
You are quite right. My mistake. Sorry for that.
ReplyDelete