an analysis of the formation and generic changes of resistance music in iran

the post-revolutionary period, however, was of a different type both in terms of the collapse of the old world order and in terms of the change of desires and aspirations of human being sat the local and this paper seeks a semantic explanation of the resistance music in iran and attempts to analyze the general structural specificities surrounding resistance music in iran. the methodological consideration for launching this study includes critical discourse analysis of van dijk and the application of explorative methods in order to reveal major concepts of resistance engraved in lyrics of the products marked as resistance music. another methodological consideration includes a comparative analysis of the music products in pre- and post-revolutionary iran so that we could indicate the changes that the resistance music has gone through during five decades starting from 1960. this paper contributes to the body of knowledge in areas such as media and cultural studies, sociology of art, and iranian cultural studies. it is related to sociology of art because the arguments consider local specificities to have been contributing to the generic production of iranian resistance music. meanwhile, the paper pays attention to untold mysteries of iranian society, and, therefore, it approximates itself to iranian cultural studies. at the same time, it pays attention to everyday life in iran, something that makes the paper fall in the category of general cultural studies. with this introductory point we can claim that this paper uses a multidisciplinary approach to study iranian music, society and art. the objective of this multidisciplinary study is to address the problematic of resistance music in contemporary iran. the paper claims it has revealed some aspects of iranian society including persian rap and its differences with iranian rap that have been neglected by academic works. in order to study resistance music, we have compared productions of resistance music both in pre and post-revolutionary periods. the final results of our analysis indicate that the requirement of each historical period of time affects the texture of the dominant music. prior to 1979 revolution, as the political situation did not provide an open atmosphere for expression of genuine iranian art, the artistic activities including production of music took the resistance orientation. although we do not intend to mystify the musical production of this period based on production of resistance music, resistance music was the dominant and attractive area in the production of music. two decades of 1960s and 1970s is now known as the golden age of iranian music, not only because resistance music was leading it but also because of the number and variety of musical production and singers of all genres. in the 1970s, however, it was the resistance music that attracted the young generation. global level. although the texture of resistance in pre-revolutionary period was mostly political, in the post-revolutionary it changed into a multidimensional texture. first of all, the period between 1979 and 1988 was different, as iran was experiencing the iraqi imposed war on iran. there was not much musical production in this period that could be marked as resistance music except what was produced abroad which expressed resentment against war. there were some other fractions of iranian exiles that produced resistance music, but they were not much welcomed by the iranian audience.