who wants a thread of contemporary Iranian music, starting from pop and psych rock in the 60s and 70s all the way through today, even including Iranian rap?

ok let's start with some of my late dad's favourites. first is Kourosh Yaghmaei, with the absolute classic "Gole Yakh" which translates into "Ice Flower/Winter Sweet"

this is a canonical number in the pantheon of Iranian pre revolutionary rock

my dad used to tell me that he listened to this song over and over again when he fell in love with my mom, and that they played a cassette with this and other songs on it repeatedly in the early days of the revolution until it got confiscated at a checkpoint on their honeymoon.

when I'm really missing him I always put this on and it invariably takes me back to a time when he was alive and we'd have a cup of tea and serenely listen to this song.

but my absolute favourite by Yaghmaei is "Paiz," which translates into "Autumn"

and lastly, from the Yaghmaei catalogue, we have "Dar Enteha," which translates into "At the End"

I'm not a musicologist, but Yaghmaei was such an important influence on the early development of rock in Iran.

jumping ahead quite a bit, here is one of my recent favourites by Radio Tehran, whose music you may've encountered in Ana Lily Amanpour's amazing "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night"

this one is called "Eshtebah" which translates into "Mistake"

switching gears a little bit, from melancholic tunes to more upbeat stuff, here's a recent favourite of mine by 127, whose work beautifully fuses jazz and rock.

this one is called "Rock Entehari (Azzizam)" which translates into "Suicidal Rock (My Dear)"

my early intro to contemporary Iranian rock started with Kiosk, whose work is generally good, but leans too needlessly political sometimes for my taste. nonetheless, the early stuff is gold.

here's a tune called "Ey Dad Az Esgh" or "What About Love"

(I love the above video so much, which you might notice is actually directed by Ahmad Kiarostami, the son of Iranian directorial giant, the late Abbas Kiarostami.)

ok, here’s a very special tune by Mohsen Namjoo, called “Toranj” which translates into “Bergamot”

the song is based on a traditional poem where a lover is pleading with his beloved and the composition is near perfect

I love this song, as did my dad. when he died, my mom asked that I pick an inscription for his tombstone, and I picked the first two lines from this song:

“He/she said: I am those bergamot, I cannot withstand the world.

I said: better than bergamot, but inaccessible...”

Let's do rap. Where to start? Well, most people agree that rap was imported into Iranian mainstream by "Zedbazi"

There are so many good songs in their catalogue, but this one, called "Zamin Safe," which translates to "Earth is Flat" is a favourite.

But Zedbazi's most popular number was a song called "Tabestoon Kootahe", which translates into "Summer is Too Short"

To this day, you'll likely hear this song blasting in cars when driving around in Tehran. Just an absolute hit.

Ok following up with more Iranian rap, here are some recent stuff I've been listening to a lot.

First off, we have Erfan, one of the biggest names in Iranian rap, with "Halle Man khoobe," which translates into "I'm Doing Well"

Absolutely this song!

More Erfan, one of my absolute favourites. It's a remix of an older Erfan song, feat. some of the hottest figures in Iranian hip hop, like Mehrdad Hidden, one of the founding members of Zedbazi (see above).

This one's called "Khatteh Man" or "My Lane."