Gender and Singing in Pahlavi Soundscape: Modern Feminine Culture and Masculine Politics in the Age of Popular Culture, Vision, and Rumors; A Discussion of Sensory History in Modern Iran

Abstract

Focusing on the cultural history of vocal music in Pahlavi Iran, this article examines the senses in modern Iranian history. As the article shows, the performance of Iranian vocal music became subject to a gendered male and female dichotomy. While this dichotomy did not exist in early Pahlavi Iran, in the early 1950s, a gendered consciousness and language emerged among male musicophilias, eventually separating genres of vocal performance across gender lines. Hence, vocal music known as āvāz became increasingly associated with male performers, while tarāneh and tasnif were increasingly associated with female performers. As the article attempts to show, this gender dichotomy should be contextualized in the broader tension between the sense of vision and sight and disciplined notions of aurality and the body. While the “modern woman's” body permeated the visual domain in the public sphere, the cultural ideals of disciplined aurality and body docility informed the male musicophilias countercultural claims in Pahlavi Iran. Eventually, the latter attempted to challenge the female agency in the public music sphere.

In this article, I examine gender in the cultural history of music in Iran during the Pahlavi period, focusing on vocal musicians in the public performance of Iranian music from Reza Shah's reign (1925–1941) to the late 1960s.² I contribute to what, following Howes, can be referred to as the “sensual turn” in modern Iranian history.³ Historians and cultural theorists have, in recent years, paid attention to the history of senses in Iran, and the wider Islamic world.⁴ This article contributes to this emerging field and shows how public culture and its musical production became a contested space for modern, feminine culture and masculine politics, reflecting a sensory contest in modern Iranian history. The mainstream public sphere from the 1940s onward was characterized by increased production in mass culture, which provided further avenues for women's art and performance.⁵ However, these new opportunities for women were challenged by a masculine counterculture. Although the history of masculinity in the late Qajar and early Pahlavi period and their connection to nationalism are well researched, I attempt to situate the masculine culture of the modernist musicophilias of Iranian music in the public sphere against the backdrop of an increasingly feminine popular culture.⁶ I portray the elite male musicophilias during the Pahlavi period through the formation of a modern cultural counter-discourse that challenged women's agency in public musical production and performance.

I focus on two genres of vocal music performance in Iranian music to illustrate how singing became a contested arena of gender politics, which ultimately limited women's performance choices in vocal music performance from the mid-1950s into the 1960s.⁷ There are differences of opinion regarding women's participation and performance in the social and cultural life of music in the nineteenth century, specifically during the late Qajar period.⁸ However, the abundance of various sources, including visual, sound, and written materials, during the Pahlavi period allows us to understand the cultural dynamics of gender and music in modern Iran. In the present study, I situate music in the broader context of cultural history in Iran during this period; hence the argument is not on music genres or the virtuosity of musicians.⁹

The performance of āvāz – a melismatic and non-rhythmic vocal music – on the one hand, and rhythmic vocal genres of singing, namely tasnif and tarāneh, on the other, became subject to a male and female dichotomy from the late 1940s and the early 1950s, which gradually developed into an official radio policy during the 1950s and 1960s. This dichotomy marginalized women from the performance of āvāz in radio's most significant program for Iranian music, namely the Golhā, and restricted the performance of āvāz in the program to predominantly male performers.¹⁰

This restrictive gender politics in public music was the result of several cultural transformations in the public sphere: the constitution and circulation of new gender notions, and what following Hendelman-Baavur, this article refers to as the production of “the modern woman” in the public, the expansion in visual and print media, including popular news and rumors, and the significance of the sense of sight which resulted in the formation of an increasingly ocular-centric public. These developments stood in contrast to the culture of the elite, male modernist musicophilias. As the cultural image of the “modern woman artist” was seen, produced and circulated in the public, “the gender anxieties” of the elite musicophilias for whom disciplined body, and silent listening practices were paramount, eventually targeted women artists.¹¹ While musicological studies in Iran have focused on music as an analytic category and ethnomusicological accounts have treated the music history of Iran based on the distinction between the categories of classical and popular, this article attempts to situate music and the question of gender in the broader context of mass culture, visuality, and aurality.¹² Hence, it avoids the analytical frameworks, as well as aesthetically and ideologically informed narratives of music, including those based on the binary of “high” and “low” art.¹³ As I attempt to show, the formation of patriarchal language and policies reflected the changes in Iranian modernity during Mohammad Reza Shah's reign when the conflict between the eye and ear became evident.

Female Vocal Musicians and the Genesis of Sonic Capitalism in Early Pahlavi Soundscape

In the final years of the Qajar dynasty, public music production gradually became a significant phenomenon in Iran.¹⁴ However, music making in the public sphere resonated more strongly during the Reza Shah's reign. The developments vis-à-vis music indexed broader transformations in sound production as the genesis of sonic capitalism in Pahlavi Iran. The phenomenon of sonic capitalism in early Pahlavi Iran was contingent on the growth of sound infrastructures, public venues for music performances, the circulation of records, and the formation of a market for sound and music.¹⁵ While sound infrastructures connected Iran to a global soundscape, Tehran, as the capital city, became a significant cosmopolitan center of modern sound and musical production. In the vibrant soundscape of Tehran under Reza Shah, gramophone records circulated music among the new music consumers in various public venues and the private houses of the elite; music reviewers wrote about music, and in the rapidly modernizing capital city, various public venues rendered diverse genres of music. As a result, music and sound during the early Pahlavi period became a socially significant phenomenon in the thriving and emerging bourgeois culture and consumption. Music also became a political category in the context of the nationalist discourse of Reza Shah's period. The modern nation-state was contingent on a specific vision of citizenship in which women, and their education, were significant. As Afsaneh Najmabadi and Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet have argued, the question of education and women were central to Iranian nationalism. According to Najmabadi, education became significant in women's history and the women's claims to citizenship in the nationalist discourse in modern Iran, as women were considered central to the nation's well-being and families.¹⁶ Writing vis-à-vis social hygiene issues, Kashani-Sabet shows how the issue of education “became a mantra of patriotic motherhood.”¹⁷According to her, the question of women's education proliferated in a variety of newspapers in the post-constitutional Iran and “the theme of patriotism (vatan parasti) would pervade discussions of Iranian politics and feminism after the constitutional revolution.”¹⁸ The debates on the significance of women's education and its connection to nationalism reverberated in the public debates about the role of music in Iran during the Pahlavi period. For instance, the “social issues” column of the daily Ettelā‘āt discussed music's social and political significance for women and their role in the nation's future. The column submitted that the most important expectation from girls, who constitute “more than half of the population,” is to nurture children (Tarbiyat-e Owlād).¹⁹ It further argued that teaching music to women is vital as they are significant for raising children.²⁰ Lastly, according to the article, it is through listening to their mother's musical instrument that children would find love “in life, and all its aspects that include family and the nation (vatan).”²¹ In addition, female vocal musicians were significant to the formation of sonic capitalism in the early Pahlavi Iran through public performances and recording of 78rpm gramophone records, the content of some of which reflected the significance of the woman's questions and themes such as women's freedom, and their veil. A few 78rpm records also reflected women's issues in the modern and nationalist discourse in Iran (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1(a). 78 rpm record. Be Yād-e Shāer-e Nākām, Mirzādeh-Ye Eshqi. A performance in memory of the poet Mirzādeh-Ye Eshqi. Artists: Qamar al-Moluk Vaziri and Hoseyn Yāhaqqi. Abu‘atā. Source: Personal archive of the author.²⁴

Figure 1(b). Side B of the same performance.

Figure 2. 78 rpm record. Be Yādegār-e Raf ‘-e Hejāb-e Nesvān-e Iran (In the Memory of Unveiling of Women of Iran). Artists: Badi‘zādeh, Abolhassan Sabā, Farhād Mirzā Mo‘tamed. SODWA company, 1314/1936, recorded at Aleppo. Source: Personal archive of the author.

While the discourse of music and nationalism was significant during Reza Shah and reverberated in the social and political life of music in the public, as well as on the 78rpm records, musicians and sound artists recorded and performed a considerable variety of music, including different kinds of vocal music, solo and ensemble music, military music, and theater.²² The significant production and circulation of music in the public domain shaped the emergence of modern musical subjects, and the constitution of a new and vibrant soundscape in which different musical genres, audiences, performers, vocalists, and last but not least music critics and writers made music an eventful common social domain. From the end of the Qajar period and specifically during the Reza Shah period, the new public avenues for sound and music production, such as the gramophone and concert halls, made women significant in forming the modern musical subjectivity and cultural modernity. Women increasingly participated in the social life of music during the reign of Reza Shah, chiefly through the performance of vocal music; both āvaz and tasnif constituted their performance repertoire.²³ Women's voices had, of course, become accessible on gramophone records from 1912 during the Qajar era.²⁵ Nearly two years before World War I, the last round of records in Iran (1912) during the Qajar era witnessed the recording of three vocal musicians, namely Eftekhār, Amjad, and Zari.²⁶ Over the next decades, until the establishment of the Pahlavi monarchy in 1925, women gradually entered social and public music performance spaces. The record industry and public halls were significant avenues for female vocal musicians to claim musical subjecthood in public, which challenged the masculine norms of musical life and the public sphere's soundscape. Women's entry into the public musical life was, at times, resisted. For instance, shortly before the end of the Qajar period, in 1924, the famous modernist musician ‘Ali Naqi Vaziri published an advertisement in the newspaper Shafaq-e Sorkh and announced the admission of music students and apprentices (Figure 3). However, the advertisement mentioned that women's music classes are limited to “Europeans, Armenians, and Jews.”²⁷ By this time, concerts and music classes had gradually begun to flourish in the capital city, and a few non-Muslim women also performed in public. Nevertheless, the public was still sensitive to Muslim women's performance in Iran.

Figure 3. Advertisement of Madrese-ye ‘Ali-ye Vaziri, accepting music students and apprentices. Source: Shafaq-e Sorkh, 79, no. 2 (1302/1924). Personal archive of the author.

In the immediate issue of the newspaper, an article attributed to Qamar-ol-Moluk-e Vaziri (1905–1959), an emerging singer who became prolific after the founding of the Pahlavi state, fervently criticized ‘Ali Dashti, the editor of Shafaq-e Sorkh.²⁸ She wrote:

Mr. Dashti! We, the women of Tehran, although in your opinion, are not capable and worthy, but are wise enough to know that in the shari‘a of Islam, except in a few cases including ejtihād, etc., there is equality between women and men. If music is prohibited in the holy shari‘a of Islam, both Muslim men and women should refrain from music. Why are men allowed to learn it, but women are prohibited from this delicate art?²⁹

With the foundation of the Pahlavi state in 1925, the situation changed to a certain degree, and women increasingly appeared in public music making, and several Muslim women performed in public. The years after the coronation of Reza Shah in April 1926 were the zenith of female vocalist's presence in public music, during which several women performers recorded gramophone records and appeared in public concerts.³⁰ Notable among them were vocal musicians such as Qamar-ol-Moluk-e Vaziri (1905–1959) (Figures 4, 5, 6, 7), Parvāneh (1910–1933), Ruhangiz (1904–1984), Iran-o-Dowleh Helen, Moluk-e Zarrabi (1905–1997), and Nayyer Aʿzam-e Rumi³¹. Some of the other less-known female vocal musicians of the period included Madam Pari Aqābābov Ashraf-o-l-Saltaneh, Zahrā Khānum-e Kuchak, Akhtar Khānom, Akhtar Khānom-e Yegāneh, Mahin Khānom, Fakhr-ol-Molouk Khānom, Irān Khānom-e Sādeqi.³² In addition to performing tasnif and rhythmic vocal music, many of these female vocalists performed a considerable number of āvāz and some of them became among the notable performers of āvāz in Iran's music history. Of course, apart from Qamar, Moluk-e Zarrabi, Ruhangiz, Parvāneh, and Iran-o-Dowleh Helen, our general biographical information about other female vocal musicians remains scant, and the identity of some of the mentioned singers remains unknown. A possible reason for this has to do with the difficulties associated with music's social status, as well as the entry of female Muslim vocal musicians into the public production of music and art. Despite the modernization of public sphere and considerable increase in public music making in Reza Shah's era, musicians faced problems from the conservative echelons of society. For example, as Chehabi has shown, the modernist musician ‘Ali-Naqi Vaziri made several attempts to create spaces for the participation of women in music and art, such as the Club Musical in 1925 and a cinema for women in 1926; the cinema, as we know, however caught fire within a year of its establishment.³³ The story of breaking musical instrument of a male Tār performer, Abdolhoseyn Shahnazi, in the 1940s in a Jewish neighborhood of Tehran and complexities vis-à-vis his funeral are examples of musicians’ social problems.³⁴ The situation would have been far more difficult for female performers aspiring to enter the public.

Figure 4. Photo of Iran-o-Dowleh Helen. Source: faridmusical78rpm, Instagram.

Figure 5. Qamar during a performance session for military figures during Reza Shah's reign, with an unknown female Tār performer. Source: Iranonlinemuseum, Instagram. Personal archive of Hasan Akbari.

Figure 6. (Two photographs.) Qamar and unknown female Tār performer, with military figures during Reza Shah's reign. Source: Iranonlinemuseum, Instagram. Personal archive of Hasan Akbari.

Figure 7. Qamar's Concert with Ebrāhim Mansuri. Source: Etelā ‘at. 2489 (1314/1935).

Nevertheless, despite the various social obstacles for musicians, and women in particular, women's participation in the public production of culture and art increased. Women vocalist recorded their works and participated in a thriving music market and public venues of the capital city.³⁵ As mentioned, as far as the recorded works were concerned, female singers recorded both genres of vocal music, and the male musicophilias, including musicians and writers, did not react to these repertoire performances with a gendered biased discourse and patriarchal policies. Hence, the gender dichotomy between the two kinds of vocal music that subsequently restricted women from the performance of āvāz in the 1950s and 1960s had not appeared during this period. As the next section shows, many of the prolific female vocalists of Reza Shah's reign remained active in Iran throughout the 1940s, and the same gender dynamic vis-à-vis rhythmic and non-rhythmic music remained intact until the late 1940s.

Female Performers of Vocal Music in the Public Sphere during the 1940s

The years after the abdication of Reza Shah in August 1941 marked a significant shift in the visual and sonic history of modern Iran when women as cultural and artistic contributors became more significant. This shift in the visual and sonic history was contingent on the proliferation and accessibility of new changes in sound and visual production. Although as Camron Amin has argued, in modern Iran, from the late nineteenth century onward, the imagination of modern womanhood increasingly became a public matter and was exposed in the “the pages of periodical press,” the proliferation of print media with increased visual content specifically during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, further radically transformed the visual public sphere.³⁶ As Liora Hendelman-Baavur has argued, the popular print media of the late Pahlavi period produced and circulated the notion of “the modern woman” that signified transformations in Iran and women's lives.³⁷ In addition, the arguments about print culture should be extended to the production of modern womanhood through other visual media, including cinema and later television. These developments in various visual media technologies resulted in the significance of the sense of sight and the emergence of ocular-centric public modernity in Iran during the Pahlavi reign. The public sphere and the bourgeois culture in modern Iran during the Pahlavi era witnessed, to borrow from de Certeau, “an epic of the eye” with the emergence and prevalence of various visual experiences.³⁸ The cultural discourses on sight and vision gained significance from the early Pahlavi period. For instance, in the context of fine art and painting during Reza Shah's reign, Ebrahim Bani-Ahmad wrote about “disciplining the eye.”³⁹ However, gradually from the 1940s onward, the massive production of visual materials created an unprecedented social and cultural visualscape and objects of vision in an increasingly ocular-centric public sphere. As this article further shows, it is this ocular-centric public sphere and the role of women in it that became the subject of male musicophilia's gender anxieties and patriarchal policies in the cultural history of music. The sensory ideals of the male musicophilia culture can best be captured in Musā Ma‘rufi's description of Iranian music as Irfāni (sufi) in front of which, one has to kneel on the ground and be humble.⁴⁰ This music, as he mentions, is not for “lust,” but rather for elevation to a higher realm of “truth.” Such disembodied intellectual reading of music informed the “antiocularcentrism” of the male musicophilias in Iran and eventually led to a gendered discourse against the “modern woman”.⁴¹ As Jonathan Crary has shown in the context of Europe, problems of vision are “about the body and the operation of social power.”⁴² In modern Iran during the Pahlavi era, too, it was the “sensual body” of female performers in an ocular-centric public sphere that became the subject of masculine anxieties and restrictive policies.

Sonically, the final year of Reza Shah's reign witnessed a significant turning point with the establishment of the radio station in Tehran on April 22, 1940. While the radio had several functions in Iran, it became an important media in the history of music production and sound dissemination. Production and broadcasting of various genres of music, including Iranian music, constituted radio's daily schedule.⁴³ On a broader scale than the gramophone, the radio was also crucial in disseminating female singers’ voice to the public. The female singers' participation in radio and the performance of āvāz was substantial, and in the first decade, various female vocal musicians appeared in this media.⁴⁴

Despite the vexed political situation in Iran following World War II, public music venues such as concert halls, cafés, restaurants, and hotels in the capital city – which had been proliferating since the end of the Qajar era and specifically during the Reza Shah's reign - drew modern music consumers to these venues of musical performance. Famous female singers from Reza Shah's period, including Qamar ol-Moluk Vaziri, Ruhangiz, Moluk-e Zarrabi, and Ruhbakhsh, continued their careers. Qamar ol-Moluk Vaziri, a notable female singer of Reza Shah's reign, had a career spanning into the 1950s (See Figure 8).⁴⁵ Various documents point to her numerous performances in the city's public venues. For instance, a March 1941 advertisement in the daily Ettelā‘āt newspaper reveals her performance at a famous café in Tehran named Shemshād (Figure 9).⁴⁶ Another advertisement shows that she performed at another café called Bāq-e Golshan in 1949 (Figure 10).⁴⁷ While from advertisements we are unable to establish the performance āvāz in these venues, her available recorded music of approximately the same time validates that she remained a virtuoso performer of āvāz and tasnif until the end of her career even when she appeared in spaces like cafés.⁴⁸ Posthumous narratives during the 1960s and 1970s constructed tales that marginalized Qamar's appearance in spaces such as cafes. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, she became the subject of cultural and intellectual debate in Iran's various cultural and intellectual circles. The cultural contest between “high” and “popular” art and culture led to several discussions in Iran during the Pahlavi era, specifically from the 1950s onward.⁴⁹ It reached its culmination in the 1970s, and Qamar's afterlives, specifically in the 1970s, should be situated in this background. Against the background of these debates, spaces such as cafes and cabarets became increasingly associated with notions of “vulgarity” and “degeneration” in the cultural discourses in prerevolutionary Iran. A series of intellectual discourses in Iran during the Pahlavi period countered the popular culture of the public sphere and depicted spaces such as cafes and dancing halls as the antonym of “high culture” and “authentic art” and synonymous with the notion of degeneration or ebtezāl. The notion of degeneration and its opposite, as Meftahi has argued, was rooted in the leftist “Marxist-inspired discourse on committed performing arts during the 1930s and 1940s.”⁵⁰ As Ali Qolipur has argued vis-à-vis cinema and theater in modern Iran, the appearance of the word ebtezāl in the critical cultural discourses predates the “semi-industrial production” in Iranian film farsi during the 1970s.⁵¹ According to him, concerning cinema, the word found its way into the writings of Toqrol-e Afshār, who wrote a criticism of a popular film titled Bi-Panāh after he regretted his role in it in 1953.⁵² This tension between high art and popular art was not restricted to cinema but pervaded the Iranian cultural and intellectual landscape and policies well until before the revolution in 1979.

Figure 8. An advertisement about Qamar's performance in a Cafe named Shemshād, Hoseynqoli Tātāi’, and Esmāil Kamāli. Source: Ettelā ‘āt 15, no. 4489 (1941).

Figure 9. An advertisement promoting Qamar's performance in Bagh-e Golshan. Source: Ettelā ‘āt, September 7, 1949.

Figure 10. Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri and Esmāil Kamāli. Probably in Radio Studio, early 1950s. Source: Personal Archive of the author.

The notion of ebtezāl pervaded writings about music, specifically from the 1950s onward. ‘High’ culture and music became associated with “authentic” manners and code of conduct, something that stood in sharp contrast with the standard practices in popular culture. For instance, the music revivalist discourse during the 1960s and 1970s associated cafes and cabarets with vulgarity.⁵³ Qamar's posthumous narratives, which portrayed her as the supporter of the marginalized sectors of society, thrived in this cultural milieu.⁵⁴ It was against the background of spaces such as cabarets and cafes as the Other of high art that this image of Qamar was further consolidated. In this context, Qamar became a public point of engagement for writers, musicians, artists, and, most notably, the revivalist music movement in the 1970s, claiming her cultural image or musical style (Figures 11, 12, 13).⁵⁵ These afterlife reconstructions of Qamar fabricated a sanitized image of her that discarded her presence in such spaces now deemed as the Other of “high culture” and “high art.” In fact, throughout Reza Shah's era and her performance career in the 1940s, she appeared in public venues such as cafes in Tehran and performed āvāz and perhaps rhythmic vocal music.

Figure 11. “Qamar: From Elite Mahfels to Public Saloons.” Source: Ettelā‘āt. No. 14743. 1354/1975.

Figure 12. Popular lyricist Ardalān Sarafrāz on Qamar: “Qamar dedicated herself to art and people.” Source: Ettelā‘āt. No. 14743. 1354/1975.

Figure 13. ‘Ali Akbar Shahnāzi: “I have not performed for any woman other than Qamar.” Source: Ettelā‘āt. No. 14743. 1354/1975. Of course, based on music and other sources, Shahnāzi had cooperated with a few other female vocal musicians.

Apart from Qamar ol-Moluk Vaziri, other important female vocalists in the 1940s included Moluk Zarrabi, Ruhbakhsh, and Ruhangiz, whose career began in the Reza Shah era. Although these vocalists during the 1940s performed fewer numbers of āvāz than during their career during Reza Shah's reign, they nonetheless performed and recorded āvāz performances or collaborated with renowned Iranian musicians. Moluk was one of these singers who collaborated with several musicians and ensembles, including the famous Barbad Society (Jāme‘-ye Bārbad) (See Figure 14).⁵⁶ Her works included diverse genres, namely a few āvāz, but prominently popular Iranian music that is tarāneh, tasnif, and “operettas.”⁵⁷ Her 78rpm records during Reza Shah's era show that she performed both kinds of vocal music, namely āvāz and rhythmic vocal music. In the 1940s, she had a striking presence in concerts and performances on various official occasions, along with famous Iranian musicians such as Abolhassan Sabā and Mortezā Neydāvud. Moluk was also a frequent performer at concerts and other events in the capital city, several of which were published in the newspapers of the time. An announcement dated October 31, 1944, in the daily Ettelā‘āt newspaper shows that Moluk performed a concert “In memory of Hoseyn Sanjari” at the Tehran Amphitheater with famous musicians Abolhasan Sabā, Mortezā Mahjubi, Vaziri-Tabār and “several artists and masters of the Music Conservatory.”⁵⁸ Another advertisement in Tehran Mosavvar dated September 20th, 1946, indicates she performed a concert at Tehran Amphitheater along with Mortezā Neydāvud and Hoseyn Tehrani “for the merchants of Tehran and provinces” (Figure 15).⁵⁹ She also performed at several charity concerts. A notice dated 30 April 1944, advertises her a charity concert in the Tehran Amphitheater with ‘Abdol-Ali Vaziri, Abolhasan Sabā, and Mortezā Mahjubi to raise funds for the earthquake victims in the city of Gorgān.⁶⁰ Another advertisement dated May 24^th, 1944, mentions her performance at the Garden Party of Amin-o-Dowleh for the benefit of “The Women Charity Orphanage.”⁶¹ A fascinating case of her public participation dates to 1945 when she appeared on stage during the Iran Party's celebration at the Hotel Palace in Tehran with Nur ‘Ali Borumand, the most significant revivalist figure in Iranian music in the 1960s.⁶² During the 1940s, Moluk remained a prolific artist in the record industry, and she recorded her 78rpms with companies such as Odeon (1326 SH /1947), Shahrzād, and Musical Records. She was also among radio performers throughout the 1940s and at least regularly until the mid-1950s when she also performed on special political and religious occasions (Figure 16).

Figure 14. An editorial about Moluk-e Zarrabi's charity activities. Muzik-e Iran. Dey 1331/January 1953.

Figure 15. Moluk's performance in Tamāshākhāneh-ye Tehran, alongside Mortezā Neydāvud and Hoseyn Tehrani. Source: Tehran Mosavvar 170. 1325/1946.

Figure 16. Announcement of Moluk's performance on a religious occasion in Radio Tehran. Tehran Mosavvar 159 (1946).

Ruhangiz (1904- 1984) was another female vocal musician who began her career during Reza Shah's reign and continued in the 1940s and 1950s (Figure 17).⁶³ However, her increasing marginalization from the late 1950s onward is a revealing case in how gender politics in music changed the musical career of this female virtuoso singer. As much as the media, newspapers, and the revivalist movement in music remembered and appreciated Qamar posthumously, Ruhangiz, despite being alive, was gradually marginalized in the music history of Iran.

Figure 17. Ruhangiz on the cover of Muzik-e Iran, Bahman 1331/February 1953.

By the 1970s, she was so marginalized in musical life that she was remembered only occasionally or in programs convened to commemorate the founding of radio in Iran (Figure 18).⁶⁴ For instance, in a program broadcast in 1975, Ruhangiz and veteran musicians and artists of the early days of radio were invited to the radio.⁶⁵ The Keyhān newspaper published an editorial about Ruhangiz in 1976 titled Chehrehā-ye Diruz (the Past Figures) (Figure 19). The piece ended by pointing to Ruhangiz's marginality and loneliness in the context of popular culture and music at the end of the Pahlavi period.⁶⁶

Figure 18. Ruhangiz (second row from front, fourth person from the right) and other veteran musicians and artists of radio. Source: Personal archive of the author.

Figure 19. “Ruhangiz's Voice still echoes in the alley,” Source: Keyhān 9948 (1976).

However, in the 1940s, she was still active in various spaces, specifically the radio and on gramophone records. Her works on the 78 rpm records and radio show that she performed both āvāz and tasnif throughout her singing career (Figure 20). During this period, she performed in several public places. For instance, an advertisement dated June 11, 1944 shows that she performed in a program titled “The Inaugural of the Summer Hall at Gabr Amphitheater.”⁶⁷ Nevertheless, notable among these public venues where she appeared frequently for several years was the renowned café Jamshid, located at the center of Tehran's music and entertainment hub on Manuchehri Street.⁶⁸ As the daily Ettelā‘āt reports, Ruhangiz quit performing at Jamshid Café in 1949, while mentioning that she accepts “women ready to take lessons in āvāz” (Figure 21).⁶⁹

Figure 21 “Ms. Ruhangiz, the Famous Singer,” Source: Ettelā‘āt, 28 Sharivar 1328/September 19, 1949, 4.

Although Ruhangiz did not regularly cooperate with the National Music Association, Esmāil Navvāb Safā, a renowned lyricist, points to Ruhangiz and Ruhbakhsh, another female singer contemporary of Ruhangiz, in several of the association's performances.⁷⁰ In addition, Ruhangiz was one of the frequent performers on radio during the 1940s, whose name appeared on several radio brochures and advertisements.⁷¹

Despite the significant presence of these women in public music making, the gendered masculine language against women singers did not target these senior female singers, who were mainly active since Reza Shah's era until the early 1950s; some of whom, like Moluk, increasingly also performed popular songs including tarānehs that were gaining popularity in Iranian music after the 1940s.⁷² Hence, the male patriarchal language and policies that emerged from the end of the 1940s did not target these female performers. Instead, a younger generation of female artists and performers became subject to the masculine discourses from the late 1940s. As mentioned, the emergence of these masculine discourses against women should be contextualized in the larger context of the pop culture of the time and the centrality of women to the ocular-centric public modernity.

Figure 20. Ruhangiz's performance with Mahmud Zolfonun (violinist) in Āvāz-e Afshāri. Musical Records Company, circa. 1949–1951. Source: Personal collection of the author.

Femininity and the Public Production of Sight, Rumors and Popular News

From the 1940s onward, popular culture boomed in Iran and redefined the public sphere. A major development in the history of public culture in Iran was the surge in production of movies and a significant growth in production of newspapers, journals, books, and pamphlets.⁷³ The tremendous transformations in Iran's visual sphere after Reza Shah's abdication led to what, in a different context, Miriam Hansen refers to as the emergence of “new modes of organizing vision and sensory perception.”⁷⁴

Many popular print media frequently used photographs of female artists and their life narratives.⁷⁵ These media depicted different narratives and images of femininity and womanhood. At times also, these media depicted patriarchal and stereotypical notions of womanhood and femininity through cartoons and stories. As a result, the print media contributed to the significance of sight and vision in the Iranian public sphere. These public productions of notions of femininity and womanhood through popular mediums of cinema, television, cafes, and print media accelerated the dissemination of a new notion of feminine beauty in Iran (Figures 22 and 23). Notions of beauty and public aesthetics in Iran began to change before the beginning date of this study. Afsaneh Najmabadi shows that the end of the Qajar period also marked the transformation of women's outlook and a new gender aesthetic.⁷⁶ These transformations in feminine aesthetics, which accelerated in the Pahlavi era, had implications for the male elite musicophilias, their gender anxieties, and patriarchal language, and policies.

Figure 22. Front cover of Tehran Mosavvar, Mehr 1338/September 1959.

Figure 23. The popular singer Purān. Source: Ettelā ‘āt-e Haftegi (16 Tir 1341/July 7, 1962).

In addition, popular newspapers, periodicals, and magazines produced massive amount of news, rumors, and gossip about artists and their personal life. These media concentrated on the life aspects and stories of celebrities, and marketed them to the reading public. The gender aspects of these popular gossips, news, and rumors were however different for male and female artists. While both male and female were the subjects of these popular news and rumors, female artists became the target of gendered criticisms and narratives in the media, and among the male decision-making circles such as the radio authorities.

Many of these rumors targeted female artists’ sexuality that rose curiosity about them. For instance, the life and rumors about the female popular singer and dancer, Mahvash (1920–1960) are an example of these gendered rumors circulating. Mahvash's fame had captured Iran and specifically the capital city's entertainment industry. Originally from a poor background in Borujerd, Mahvash rose to fame in capital city and was specifically popular among what Naficy calls “the lower-class patrons and tough guys.”⁷⁷ She performed a musical genre known as Kuchebāzāri or Café music that had become an important genre of popular music in Iran from the 1940s onward. As Bayat shows, Mahvash began her performance career in local urban folk bands and private gatherings but went on to perform even in upper-town cafes and eventually appeared in a few movies.⁷⁸ A book was also circulated and attributed to her titled The Secrets of Sexual Pleasure (Rāz-e Kāmyābi-ye Jensi), published in June 1957 (Figure 24(a) and 24(b)).⁷⁹ As Afary has mentioned, the book was written as a kind of autobiography and “was part advice manual on marriage, part erotica, and part frank discussion of sexuality by a former prostitute.”⁸⁰ The book vastly discussed various questions that pertained to sex and sexuality in Iranian society.⁸¹ Patriarchal and gender-biased rumors circulated and targeted her in the public about her prostitution.⁸² A short piece written anonymously in the weekly Ettelā’at-e Haftegi immediately after Mahvash passed away is an example of such views about the lives of artists like Mahvash. The writer resentfully spoke about Mahvash, referred to her prostitution, and finally complained that “people read this last news about her avidly.”⁸³ In the next issue of Ettelā’at-e Haftegi, Hasan Sadr-e Hāj Seyyed Javādi, wrote an article in response to the previous article defending Mahvash by submitting that she was not morally corrupt (fāsed) (Figure 25)⁸⁴.

Figure 24(a). Front cover of Mahvash's book, The Secrets of Sexual Pleasure (Rāz-e Kāmyābi-ye Jensi). Source: Personal archive of the author.

Figure 24(b). First page of Mahvash's book.

Figure 25. Source: “Mahvash was neither luti, nor fāsed (morally corrupt).” Etelā’at-e Haftegi 1008 (1340/1960): 6.

Examples of these rumors and popular news about female artists are abundant in the copious production of popular print media during this period. Tehran Mosavvar, a widely read popular magazine, covered some of these rumors about female artists. For example, in September 1965, this magazine referred to a man named Pedar-e Ruhāni, who only drove female singers’ home after their performances in the new-established TV station.⁸⁵ However, he did not accompany male vocalists such as Ahmad Nakhost and Ahmad Ebrāhimi.⁸⁶ These rumors and the popular image of women circulated in the media led to sensitivities among the policymakers about women active in the radio. For example, according to Tehran Mosavvar, the radio authorities had intended once to expel Shams – one of the popular prolific singers of the radio and record industry – “because of publishing a few nude photographs.”⁸⁷ Of course, they revoked the decision later, as reported in the same article.⁸⁸

Male artists too were subject to popular news production and circulation in the media as well as rumors within the labyrinths of Iranian music's social and cultural life. For instance, among the male vocalist active both in Iranian classical music in radio, as well as the popular music industry, Akbar Golpāyegāni's life was a recurring theme for popular news in the public featuring him in various newspapers, and magazines of the time (Figures 26 and 27).

Figure 26. “Elāhe and Golpāyegāni are involved in the fishery trial.” Source: Ettelā‘āt -e Haftegi. No. 1043 (Mehr 1340/September 1961).

Figure 27. “Why are the single guys of our city horrified of women?” Golpāyegāni, first person from right. Source: Ettelā‘āt -e Haftegi. No. 1077 (Khordād 1341/June 1961).

But these popular news stories and rumors may not have had as much implication for male performers as they did for the female artists. Of course, rumors within the music circles circulated about male musicians, and their private lives. The collective memory and oral historical narratives of the Iranian music community also share rumors about the sexuality of noted male artists, including hints of homoerotic predilections.⁸⁹ However, these rumors about the sexuality of male artists have remained private and have not been manifestly part of a broader public discourse. Within the Iranian music community, many of these rumors – specifically about male musicians’ sexuality have been subject to public-collective reticence or private whispering. The silencing of rumors within the Iranian music community, specifically those concerning musicians’ homoeroticism, should be contextualized within the wider context of the genesis of modern bourgeois culture in which disciplinary and legal measures vis-à-vis family and sexuality, as well as the formation of modern bourgeoise ādāb (etiquettes) were significant. Eventually, these factors disciplined and purified the musical culture as well. As Afary has shown, modern intellectual discourses and disciplinary practices on sexuality and homoeroticism from the Qajar to the Pahlavi period changed the normative conceptions of family and sexuality. According to her, from the early Pahlavi period state took a series of measures, including the 1933 Penal code “against pederasty and male prostitution.”⁹⁰ Such policies in favor of modern bourgeoise family continued in the future decades during the Pahlavi period. For example, according to her, during the 1950s and 1960s, even though, democracy was crushed under the Shah, gender modernization continued, as a result of which nuclear family, superseded phenomena such as arranged union and formal polygamy.⁹¹ At the cultural level, the bourgeoise culture fashioned modern ādāb of urbanity in which new modes of conviviality, relationships, socialization and friendships defined the new cultural ethos of bourgeoisie in Pahlavi Iran.⁹² In this context, the lifestyles considered non-normative and “wayward” sexual relationships – specifically those in relation to male homoerotic sexuality and desire – became silenced and sidelined in public discourses. The silencing of male desire and sexuality in the modernity of music in Iran also finds parallels in other cultural spheres. As Alexander Jabbari has shown about the modernity of Persian and Urdu literature, a similar trend was noticeable in the print culture. According to him, before the “Persianate modernity,” discussions of sexuality, including homoerotic practices, were part of the tazkirahs.⁹³ However, modern historians of Persian and Urdu literature, informed by a “Victorian-influenced puritanism” vis-à-vis sexuality rendered those “unruly” sexualities into silence.⁹⁴ While the erasure of these aspects in print culture is noticeable through critical editions of print materials, the effacement of “unruly” and “wayward” sexuality in the culture of art music is intricately connected to oral narratives, memory, and mechanisms of remembrance and amnesia conditioned by the etiquettes of the bourgeoise culture.⁹⁵

Nevertheless, while in the cultural context of later Pahlavi Iran, “unruly” male sexuality and desire were hushed or sidelined, rumors circulating around female popular artists, who became active after the 1940s, remained crucial in the public discourse and, at times, acted against them. As the body of popular female artists became increasingly seen in the public and was produced via the media, the modernist elite male policy-makers formed gendered and patriarchal reactions to the display of the modern woman in the public, and in the music spaces.

Masculine Reactions to the New Feminine Popular Culture

Against modern public notions of womanhood, the older generations of Iranian musicians and gradually policy makers formed patriarchal reactions and policies that targeted women artists, specifically those in official spaces such as the radio. As women were increasingly seen in public halls, on cinema's screen and inside and on the front covers of popular magazines, pamphlets and books, male circles of high art Iranian music gradually formed reactions to it. It is in this context that āvāz ultimately emerged as a more masculine activity, while tasnif and tarāne were increasingly considered as more as belonging to the feminine domain.⁹⁶

From the 1940s onward, the woman question captured the attention of male writers, critics, artists and musicians who were active in Iranian music. The disciplining of the woman's body on stage gradually captured the attention of male activists. These demands for disciplining were part of the larger cultural formation of the elite bourgeoise in modern Iran in which disciplining the senses and body and the cultivation of ādāb were central. In other words, to behave modern and urbanely, based on the elite cultural sensibilities meant to discipline the ear, body, and tastes in order to distinguish those with what they considered the “frivolities” of the popular culture, produced and seen in the public space.⁹⁷ In an article in Chang magazine in 1946, Ruhollah Khāleqi discussed the etiquette of an ideal female singer on stage: “the female singers should not appear with frivolous clothes or jewelries on the stage and their cloths should be uniform with that of other orchestra members.”⁹⁸ Soon, however, these growing male anxieties about women's presence prompted some male cultural activists, including musicians and writers, to write about āvāz as generally a superior kind of male vocal music performance in public. For instance, Jalāl-o-ddin-e Homāei (1900–1980), a scholar of classical Persian literature, referred to Yunes Dardashti (19091994–), a male Jewish vocalist of āvāz, as an “artist singer” who “ought not be considered similar to ordinary tasnif performers who are fallaciously considered as āvāz-khān.”⁹⁹

One of the earliest examples of patriarchal and biased language in reaction to popular female musicians in public is in a comment by Yunes Dardashti himself in 1951. Dardashti began his career in radio in the early 1940s and remained a steadfast performer of āvāz (See Figure 28). His scathing remarks in the weekly Ettelā‘āt-e Haftegi on February 23rd, 1951, shows the mounting gender anxieties and consciousness among the elite male Iranian artist in reaction to the popular culture and female performers in the public (Figure 29). In this interview, the magazine referred to him as mard-e āvāz (the man of Iranian vocal music) and quoted him by saying that “he never performs tasnif.” In fact, throughout his career Dardashti remained a staunch performer of āvāz and yet for unknown reasons never performed in the most important radio program for Iranian music, namely the Golhā. In a note in Tehran Mosvvar, Dardashti is remembered as a forgotten singer who never acceded to performance of tasnif.¹⁰⁰ In the above mentioned earlier Ettelā‘āt-e Haftegi interview, Dardashti further submitted that performing āvāz is an artistic and adroit skill, whereas “mammals” sing tasnif. The weekly Ettelā‘āt Haftegi continues by quoting him as follow:

Dardashti claims the grandiosity of a tasnif only depends on the movements of the breasts of the tasnif singer. I swear, I am serious. Only mammals should perform tasnif, because they can move around in front of an audience to attract their attention. Dardashti vigorously opposes tasnif and tarāne singers because he believes the emergence of gramophone and radio in Iran has fostered this farce, which has stained art music. According to Dardashti, Aref Qazvini's and Amir Jāhed's tasnif are the only genuinely artistic tasnif because they were composed artistically.¹⁰¹

Figure 28. Yunes Dardashti. Source: Tehran Mosavvar 786 (1958), 15.

Figure 29. “Alas! he does not have breasts. Otherwise, he could also sing Tasnif.” Source: Ettelā‘āt-e Haftegi. 498 (1950).

We witness similar gender anxieties and reactions by male artists in other narratives from the same period. In this regard, Ahmad Marāteb's narrative about the reasons why his vocal teacher, Tāj Esfahani, discontinued his performance on radio in the early 1950s is another illuminating case in point. According to him, Tāj Esfahani had to travel to radio Tehran's Studio from Esfahan from the beginning of the radio's establishment until the end of the 1940s to the mid-1950s.¹⁰² Apparently, before one of Tāj's performances in the radio, a producer requested Taj to cancel his program in favor of a lady who was not a virtuoso singer.¹⁰³ The producer ostensibly intended to persuade her for marriage by offering her a performance session in radio. According to this oral narrative, the low radio salary and travel inconveniences between Isfahan and Tehran embittered the veteran male vocalist, Tāj Esfahani. After this incident, he met the other male veteran singer, Adib Khānsāri, and recounted the incident. Adib indignantly told the dismayed Tāj: “Mr. Tāj! Do not sing in this modern Shahr-e Now,” comparing radio's atmosphere with the red-light district in Tehran.¹⁰⁴

Gendered Policies and Vocal Music in the 1950s and 1960s

These gendered biased remarks against female popular artists continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s and finally led to the implementation of a policy in the Golhā program to limit women's performance choices.¹⁰⁵ But before that, music writers and critics of the 1950s channelized these gender anxieties in their articles. They reinforced the woman's body and appearance on stage as the Other of art music, and some argued for a disciplined and “appropriate” mode of appearance on stage. Hormoz Farhat, for example, in an article, claimed sarcastically that these days, “physical beauty” has become the basis for a successful career for female vocalists.¹⁰⁶ An anonymous article titled “The noteworthy letters: Fine Arts and Television,” while criticizing the visual features of women performing in the newly established television, decried one of the female singers associated with the Ministry of Fine Arts.¹⁰⁷ The anonymous writer pointed out that, despite the “poor singing quality” of a female singer, no one discerns her incompetence in vocal performance, because audiences only pay attention to her physical appearance.¹⁰⁸ At the end of the 1950s, Ali Mohammad-e Rashidi, a prolific music critic, wrote articles critical of the presence of women in the popular music scene. In a letter addressed to ‘Ali Naqi Vaziri, he referred to female singers as shallow and “doll singers.”¹⁰⁹ He also contrasted their singing technique with previous vocal performers such as Qamar-ol-Moluk-e Vaziri and Ruhbakhsh.¹¹⁰ In another piece, referring to Banān and Fākhtei, as the only two “authentic” vocal music, he reprimanded music critics by submitting:

These days, pimps have turned into creatures called art critics; they have taken a new role. Their job is to focus on the waist and hip size of female singers or the number of times such and such female singer invites men to their bed.¹¹¹

Khāleqi, too, emphasized the importance of the disciplined bodies of female artists on stage and during T.V show performances. In an article titled “Music on Iranian TV,” referring to the performance of female singers on television, he submitted, “although the female performer had a fine voice, they had decorated the stage for her performance, but the decoration was unnecessary.”¹¹² He continues,

“[…] Most TV singers, especially women, want to attract viewers with their body gestures and facial expressions, as well as their hair and makeup. Unfortunately, this approach has become common in television after Khātereh [Parvāneh]. However, many male singers nowadays replicate such gestures, which is very annoying […]. These childish gestures, in my opinion, are a disgrace on the holy face of music”.¹¹³

This outlook towards women in music performance became a dominant policy not only for Khāleqi but for Davud Pirniā, an aristocrat lawyer and the founder of radio's Golhā program. It was during the mid-1950s onwards, in radio's Golhā program that policy-makers such as Pirniā and Khāleqi demarcated the performance of vocal music based on gender lines. Pirniā and Khāleqi, who cooperated in radio's Golhā program, dichotomized the performance of āvāz and tasnif into male and female, respectively. Simā Binā, a female vocal performer, submits that Pirniā believed men should perform āvāz and women should perform tasnif.¹¹⁴ Khāleqi, by this time, had come to the same conclusion. The exchange of letters between Khāleqi and the editorial board of Muzik-e- Iran in the early 1960s indicates this. In an editorial article titled “The Beginning of Transformations in Radio's Music,” the editors of the monthly Muzik-e Iran lamented that “today's artists and musicians are more like uneducated idols, whom people worship like saints, and everything in their music has turned into banality.”¹¹⁵ It suggested that the Music Council should address such significant concerns. One of its recommendations was “to remove all female singers from the radio and to assess the singers' ability in sight-singing, musical instruments, and their awareness of the repertory of Iranian music.”¹¹⁶ Khāleqi in response to this article in the next issue dated June 1963 wrote:

In one of your comments, you suggested that all female artists should be removed from the radio. This statement, in my opinion, includes abhorrence, since radio cannot ignore female artists, especially when some of them are competent and have good abilities. True, many female singers should not perform āvāz, but others are talented at singing tasnifs, and their presence on the radio may be beneficial[…]. Male singers, on the other hand, sing more precisely, and if necessary, they need to have a brief training course for female vocalists since most of them have not had enough training (emphasis added by the author).¹¹⁷

The Golhā program of radio became the space for manifesting this gender dichotomy concerning the performance of vocal music and masculine policies. Therefore, a few female vocal musicians who could perform āvāz did not gain the opportunity to perform in Golhā. Instead, they occasionally appeared in other radio programs including another radio program titled Musiqi-ye Irani (Iranian Music).¹¹⁸ One of these programs in the early 1960s introduced four vocal musicians. The advertisement for this program, published in Tehran Mosavvar on June 10, 1960, used the Persian gendered idiomatic mard-e- meydān (man of the field) and stated that “there are just four singers who are men in the field (Figure 30).”¹¹⁹ Among these, the advertisement included Ruhangiz. Despite her ability in āvāz performance, Ruhangiz at this time was marginalized, and the Golhā authorities never invited her to perform in the program. Ruhangiz's marginalization was associated with the changing gender norms in the public sphere that neither accepted her in the popular culture, nor in the dominant Iranian music circles at the time, specifically the radio program, Golhā.

Figure 30. “Only Four Singers are Man of this Field”. Source: Tehran Mosavvar 875 (1339/1960): 62.

The story of Ruhangiz and her increasing marginalization as a female vocal performer of āvāz and tasnif best exemplifies the changing gender normativity and politics in music specifically in the official circles such as the radio, parts of which was controlled by the male musicophilias (See Figure 31). As mentioned earlier, rumors circulated around female musicians’ lives and some of these in fact circulated in oral narratives about Ruhangiz. One such narratives again revolves around her sexuality and alleged origin from the red-light districts.¹²⁰ Of course, there is no written proof or corroboration about this, and such claims about female artists should be situated in the larger economy of rumor production around female artists, specifically active in music and cinema, in modern Iran.

By the late 1950s, Ruhangiz was at the periphery of professional music circles, specifically from the Golhā program in which she never obtained the chance to perform. Her marginalization, as hinted earlier, was not due to her declining ability to perform āvāz.¹²¹ It was, instead, the changing gender norms of appearance and gendered politics of singing that pushed her to the margins: the masculine musicophilias limited the performance of āvāz to men in Golhā, and the feminine norms of beauty in the public envisioned norms that did not include a female vocalist like Ruhangiz as acceptable. So, while the musicophilias targeted women's popular culture and internally limited women within Iranian music, the popular culture and the space of the “modern woman's” cultural production were not necessarily conducive to vocal musicians like her.

Figure 31. “We have approached Ruhangiz: a Woman who is neither beautiful, nor Young.”

Shortly after Qamar-ol-Moluk Vaziri's death, Ruhangiz voiced scathing criticisms about the music scene, and the emerging young popular female singers. In an issue of Tehran Mosavvar dated September 19^th 1958, a reportage refers to her condition stating that she “earns 15,000 Rials per month to sing every night at Cafe Jamshid, and she must support a family of ten with this income” (Figure 32).¹²² After this article, the following issues of Tehran Mosavvar witnessed an intense argument between Ruhangiz and several female pop singers. In an interview published in issue no. 839 of Tehran Mossavvar, Ruhangiz described new pop stars as “illiterate” singers who behave like “idols” and “sculptures” (Figure 33).¹²³ In this interview, she asserted that her voice has “many fans” even though some have called her “old and out of style.”¹²⁴ The article continues to describe these admirers as the generation of parents.¹²⁵ The female pop singers, according to Ruhangiz, are “unable to sing properly for even ten minutes.”¹²⁶ She further accused these singers of lack of knowledge of the classical canonical repertory of Iranian music, rhythm, and poetry, and accused them of attempting to “abuse the fame and good name of Qamar.”¹²⁷ This harsh criticism reached its zenith when she attacked the singers' personal life, by claiming that most of these “pseudo-artists” use drugs and “drink a few bottles of alcohol every night before going to bed.”¹²⁸

Figure 32. Rouhangiz. Source: Tehran Mosavvar 786 (1958).

Figure 33. “Ruhangiz Seeks Challengers.” Source: Tehran Mosavvar, no. 839. (Mehr 1338/October 1959).

Pop female singers such as Shams, Elāhe, and Purān responded to Ruhangiz's remarks in the following issues of Tehran Mosavvar (Figure 34). Elāhe claimed that only the public can judge her art and that the public purchases her records “like gold.”¹²⁹ Purān, in a similar vein, responded that her gramophone records “have been the bestsellers within the last week or two (Figure 35).”¹³⁰ The harshest response, however, came from Shams, who claimed that Ruhangiz was an addict to opium- and morphine.¹³¹

Figure 34. “Singers Object to Ruhangiz.” Source: Tehran Mosavvar. no. 842.

Figure 35. Puran-e Shāpuri's response to Ruhangiz, Tehran Mosavva, 778 (1337/1958): 9.

Ruhangiz, however, had defended another vocal performer named Delkash, whom she considered the best among Iranian female singers of the time.¹³² Nevertheless, Delkash, like Ruhangiz, did not obtain the opportunity to perform in the mainstream Golhā program. An article in Tehran Mosavvar stated that Delkash and Pirniā – Golhā's director until the mid-1960s - had an argument, and as a result, Delkash had not agreed to perform in the program (Figure 36). In recent years, Amir Hushang Ebtehāj (19282022–), the Iranian poet and the last director of Golhā, has recounted a more detailed tale about the possible source of disagreement between Delkash and Pirniā that had resulted from her absence from the program, in spite of her āvāz performance abilities. According to Ebtehāj, when Pirniā headed the Golhā, Delkash was eager to perform in Golhā but Pirniā was reluctant to allow her in the program. In protest, Delkash went to Pirnia's office and addressed Pirnia with abusive language.¹³³ No matter what the real source of disagreement may have been that led Pirniā not to allow Delkash in the program, the decision had nothing to do with her vocal performance abilities, but at least shows how the musicophilias like Pirniā who enjoyed administrative authority vis-à-vis music policies, could limit women's agency in official spaces such as radio.¹³⁴

Figure 36. “Delkash and the Golhā Program”, Source: Tehran Mosavvar. 842. 30 Mehr 1338/23 October 1959.

Conclusion

This article argued that singing during the Pahlavi era gradually became subject to gender anxieties and politics of the masculine culture of the musicophilias. In Iran under the Shah from the 1940s onward until the revolution in 1979, the feminine culture and the idea of “modern woman” formed a major cultural trend in the public sphere. This feminine culture became a point of cultural anxiety for male elite modernists from the end of the 1940s onward, who sometimes influenced cultural decision-making vis-a-vis music. The public sphere and mass culture, consisting of modern media such as newspapers, radio, magazines, cinema, and television, provided various avenues for women's cultural participation and expression. However, the elite masculine musicophilias reacted with biased and patriarchal language and formed conservative policies regarding women's appearance in public. Externally, the masculine culture of the musicophilias reacted to the dominant popular culture and the idea of “modern woman” as circulated in the media; internally, where possible, they implemented a series of disciplinary and restrictive policies to control women. As a result, from the late 1940s until the late 1960s, Iranian vocal music became subject to a gender dichotomy: increasingly male performers performed āvāz while female performers performed tarāne and tasnif. Of course, this dichotomy is not a decisive distinction, and women continued to perform āvāz in official spaces such as the radio where possible. This dichotomy in the performance of āvāz as dominantly a male vocal musical performance and tasnif and tarāneh as female vocal music performance reached its zenith in the Golhā program, a space for cultural practices of the masculine musicophilias. The emergence of this dichotomy in the performance of vocal music was an example of the contest between the feminine and masculine culture in the public domain. These changes resulted from the masculine and feminine dichotomy vis-à-vis vocal performance that became a significant policy in Golhā. The gender contest between the feminine culture and the masculine counterculture of the musicophilias was also a contest between the senses in modernity during Pahlavi Iran, which created an “affective field” around the body of the “modern woman”.¹³⁵ As Marshall McLuhan once famously mentioned: “There can be no greater contradiction or clash in human cultures than that between those representing the eye and the ear.”¹³⁶ This was indeed the case in modern Iranian history, during which the masculine musicophilias began to implement patriarchal language and policies by advocating notions of the disciplined ear and body and challenging the notion of the “sensuous” modern woman in public. The entry of women into music scenes and the formation of patriarchal reactions to it are reminiscent of various critical studies across the world. As Partha Chatterjee has argued in his foundational study of the 19th-century Bengal Renaissance and modernity, patriarchal modern male discourses did not confine women to the sphere of the home; the modern woman entered the public sphere “under conditions that would not threaten her femininity.”¹³⁷ In Iran the sonic capitalism of the early Pahlavi era provided avenues for the circulation of female singers' voices in the public. However, the intensification of visual modernity in the later Pahlavi era and the circulation of the image of the modern, feminine woman conditioned that presence and led to the formation of masculine reactions that limited female performance options. The limitations imposed on the female artists' performance of vocal music should be contextualized against this feature of modernity in later Pahlavi Iran.