Indie rock survives in oppressive Tehran

The formation of underground music scenes is hardly a novel concept.

In the United States, music countercultures have always flourished when political tensions peak and carbon copies of a particular sonic trend flood the airwaves.

The rock subgenre of punk pierced the flower-child movement as early as 1967 with harder-edged groups like the Stooges and further retaliated against mass-produced arena rock in the mid-1970s with the Ramones, Sex Pistols and Patti Smith.

Later in the early 1980s, hardcore raged in a time during which intensely hook-driven pop music reigned. Though these countercultures came to define generations, their origins mainly rested in the simple rejection of the popular musical aesthetic.

But imagine if the act of creating, playing and producing any form of music that deviated from “non-traditional” — whether rock or rap, pop or blues — was forbidden and punishable by the national government. The underground, then, would be not just a rejection of a prevailing aesthetic or a repulsion of the mainstream but also truly underground — secretive, risky and, at times, life-threatening.

This is neither Footloose nor is it fodder for history textbooks. The place is Tehran, and the time is now.

In No One Knows About Persian Cats, award-winning Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi explores Tehran’s hidden yet electrifying sonic underground using actual musicians and figureheads from the thriving indie-rock scene.

Ghobadi co-wrote the screenplay with his girlfriend, American-Iranian journalist Roxana Saberi, who was imprisoned last year by the Iranian government on espionage charges.

A loosely scripted narrative that has been falsely designated a rock documentary on Internet sites and message boards, No One Knows About Persian Cats follows real-life Iranian indie-rock power couple Ashkan Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi (whose dark synth-pop outfit goes by the name of Take It Easy Hospital) as they struggle to assemble a band, procure passports and visas to tour in Europe, and obtain a permit to perform a concert in their homeland as one last hurrah.

Akin to Gillo Pontecorvo’s stark realism in the visually political tour-de-force The Battle of Algiers (1966), No One Knows About Persian Cats is a slow-burning yet riveting model of cinema verite in its finest form. Shot in only 18 days on a hand-held digital camera and without a permit from the government — a requirement for all films produced in Iran — Ghobadi delves into stories lurking beneath Tehran’s crowded streets and uncovers makeshift recording studios, rehearsal spaces and concert venues where Iranian musicians line the walls with blankets and jam freely — or as freely as they can with one keen eye always on the lookout.

In present-day Iran, striking a chord on an electric guitar is considered a crime, one that has sent countless numbers of musicians, young and old, to prison. The only sound permitted in night clubs or on the radio is traditional Persian music, a legal holdover from the Islamic Revolution, the regime change that radically transformed Iran from one of the most Westernized nations in the Middle East to a state regulated by strict Islamic law. Every remnant of Iran’s Western past was tossed across nation lines — including rock ‘n’ roll.

To attain a permit to perform as a band, musicians must have their demos approved by the government. Rock groups that practice in their homes are reported to the police. Even traditional Persian music is illegal if it’s performed by a woman — women are not allowed to perform solo but only as backing vocalists for a band, so guitar and piano-wielding songstresses inspired by the Western likes of Joni Mitchell, Tori Amos and Norah Jones are swiftly blacklisted.

According to a recent article in The Washington Post, Ghobadi said that “more than 90 percent of artistic production in Iran is created underground.” What has formed from this, however, is a kind of indie rock unfamiliar to Americans, one that is not a generic definition for anything that is neither on American Idol nor on the Vans Warped Tour but an all-encompassing term for any band brave enough to play within Tehran’s walls yet outside the Islamic regime’s rules.

Despite their varying backgrounds and musical tastes, these artists — many of whom contend they’re not outwardly political — have become unintentional activists, as their music unifies a disconnected city and revives a culture beaten and bruised by oppressors.

And it is this power of music — the ability to form a collective conscience that is both artistic and socially aware — that ties the Iranian underground together.

“I just want a place to sing,” Negar begs in the film, a sentiment that is immediately reciprocated by her fellow musicians.

But what’s most intriguing about No One Knows About Persian Cats is the film’s journey thus far. After the movie premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where it received a Special Jury Prize, and continued its rounds on the world festival circuit — it picked up an award for best foreign film at the São Paulo International Film Festival — Ghobadi almost immediately felt the weight of the consequences for creating the film. As it continues to open in theaters across the globe, Ghobadi is increasingly seen as a criminal in the eyes of the Iranian government and acknowledges that he has become an exile from his homeland.

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Ghobadi described his current fragile situation: “Either they will throw me in jail, or, if they’re very polite to me, they will put me under house arrest and they will seize my passport because I have made this movie and I am doing this interview with you.”

And even though many of the bands featured in the film have fled to perform elsewhere — Take It Easy Hospital is currently based in London, while Joy Division-inspired outfit Yellow Dogs recently played several shows in Brooklyn — their notes from the underground continue to resound in their lively yet introspective music.

“Your lyrics are always so dark,” Ashkan says to Negar in the film after she shows him her latest scrawls of inspiration in her notebook. “Did you write them in prison?”

Although these lines are scripted, the sad thing is they are mere breaths away from the truth.

Lauren Barbato is a senior majoring in writing for screen and television. Her column “Sound Check” ran Tuesdays.