Abstract
Iranian singer
GELAREH SHEIBANI CANNOT go back to her homeland to visit her sick father for fear of arrest. He is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and while the 35-year-old would like to return to Iran to see him, the risk is too great.
Although she sees her mother, sister and brother when they visit her in Turkey and other neighbouring countries, she added: “My father is sick, he cannot travel and I haven’t seen him for eight years.”
Now living in Istanbul, the singer was part of the underground music movement in Iran before she was arrested in 2013. She left not long after to pursue a living making music abroad and continued to release songs online.
“When [the arrest] happened, my father’s Alzheimer’s started,” she said. “I remember how scared he was.”
Through choked tears she added: “I was looking at him and thinking maybe this is my fault for creating this pain.”
At that time, Sheibani did not think she was leaving Iran forever, and could not have foreseen that she would never see some of her family again.
It was her brother who called her to warn her about grievances held by the authorities back in Iran.
She recalled: “They took my brother and they asked him, ‘Why is she still doing this?’
“He called me and told me, ‘Don’t ever think about coming back to Iran’.”
Musicians often draw on their experiences, and My insight – the extract provided to Index and reprinted below – is no different. Such a feeling of pain and longing for home naturally bleeds through into the lyrics written by someone who uses music to express herself.
“This song has layers for me,” she said. “After I was arrested I went to China and I started to perform there. I was signed to some agencies. It was very difficult for me because I had to work, I had to make money because my family couldn’t support me, I had to just start doing whatever I could.
“I was in north China, I didn’t know anybody, I was so homesick. I had very bad depression, I was thinking about all the things that happened – the courts, how my dad felt, how they were scared for me. It was so crazy, and I missed them a lot.”
Sheibani’s crime in the eyes of the Iranian authorities was, quite simply, her voice. Her songs were not political, but the very idea of her singing was an affront to a theocratic Islamic government that deemed her – or any woman’s – singing unlawful, for fear of inciting lust in men.
The cause of the problem was her audience. Women can sing to crowds in Iran, but it must be either as part of a choir or to a female-only audience.
Her music videos contain powerful and moving images, relating to the songs with colourful and expressive pictures. They are, in some ways, empowering.
But this form of expression drew anger from the authorities.
Iran boasts some of the world’s most renowned, respected and beautiful art and poetry, and expression through art is ingrained into its culture. The censorship of music stems from an argument about its place in Islam. During the 1979 revolution, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini said: “Music is like a drug. Whoever acquires the habit can no longer devote himself to important activities. We must completely eliminate it.”
Though not eliminated completely, music-making continues to be strictly controlled.
In August 2020, the previously imprisoned musician Mehdi Rajabian was arrested again for working with female singers and dancers. It is incidents such as this that make Iranian artists and musicians fearful.
Sheibani believes it’s musicians who suffer the most under such controls.
“In other types of art, [such as] in acting, they have some activities they can do,” she said. “This is my sound; it is my voice. I can influence with my voice [and] it is forbidden.”
Though it was decided Sheibani’s singing was a challenge to Iranian authorities, she insists it was not her intention to provoke.
“My songs were about love; they weren’t something going against the government. Nothing political,” she said. “But it had a different sound. It was different for them to hear this new sound for a new generation. From the beginning [this government] are limiting women in any way they can... they’re really against the freedom of women. They don’t count you as human, they don’t want you have a voice, to talk, to have value.
“Definitely they are scared of women having a voice or an opinion, an idea.”
My insight
Missing you so much
In these lonely nights
Why our hands
have fallen apart?
You there and me alone
Its the bitterness of these moments
On our way
A limbo of arguments
You could fall in love with me
you were afraid of it
You knew I could fall for you
You chose to ignore it
You feared my vision
You feared my voice
You feared my flame
And you realised
I couldn’t sleep… without you
You feared my pride
You feared my past
You feared my lonely heart
Told you I was struggling…
with the world
You there and me alone
It’s the bitterness of these moments
On our way
A limbo of arguments
