First of all, it must be said: the music Kiosk does is prohibited in their country.
But far away from their home, Arash Sobhani (Guitars, Vocals), Ardalan Payvar (Keys), Ali Kamali (Bass), Tara Kamangar (Violin) and Mohammad Talani (Guitar) keep making music and dreaming with a free Iran. In 2014 the band released their 7th album, Zang Bezan Azhans (Call a cab), and then we started talking*. This is the first of a series of three posts with our interview with Kiosk.
Context
Invasões Bárbaras – It’s hard for western people to imagine Iran before revolution. How was the country? In terms of politics, culture and freedom?
Arash Sobhani: I think the whole region was a lot different, there was political oppression, which was mostly the side effect of the cold war, there was a lot of pressure on communists like a lot of other countries, even in Latin America, but the government did not interfere with people’s private lives and people enjoyed it. People enjoyed life like everywhere else, the artists too, specially. The music scene was really active and progressive. Iran was a pro-western dictatorship, but now it’s a religious ideological dictatorship that penetrates all the way to people houses.
IB – At the time of the alleged political openness (Khatami government, 1997) you tried to start a band legally in Iran (Name of the Night) before leaving for the States. How was that experience?
Arash: There was a huge emergence of young generation, the under 30 Iranians made 70% of the population. I think the regime had to show some tolerance, but deep down they were as repressive as before. They would let us record our albums, but under heavy censorship of our lyrics. They let us book venues for concerts, after getting all sorts of permissions, but even then 2 out of every 3 concerts would be cancelled by the police the day before the show, which was really frustrating.
But we were young and we kept going back for permission to a new date and new show. Basically, the government tried to contain the young population and that’s what they did. They forced us to change the name of the band because they thought the name is too “rebel”. They had to find a way to let the steam out of the pot before it explodes.
IB – Have any of you ever got in trouble because music is considered illegal? What did you do while living in Iran to avoid issues with the law?
Arash: You had to be extra careful, and use all sorts of creative ways to sound proofing. We were stopped by the police when moving musical equipment and they try to give us a hard time, but overall we were lucky and cautious, while friends were busted in parties and had their instruments confiscated and had to sign a paper at the police promising not to play again!
IB – What could happen to you for being a ‘marginal’ musician, according to Iranian laws? Or an expat musician? What are the penalties?
Arash: The problem with music and censorship in Iran is that there are no sets of clear laws, they are really good at keeping everything ambiguous so one would start self-censoring himself, because anything can be illegal. The problem is that they don’t like music in general to begin with. Even the supreme leader has expressed the fact that he doesn’t like that music is being taught in universities, and that is so inhumane and backward.
So there are no penalties in law, but depending on the case and how they want to make an example of you they will get creative!
IB – Was there an iranian rock scene before the revolution?
Arash: Yes, the rock scene in Iran goes way back to the 60’s and there have been a quite a handful of bands that did some amazing works. Unfortunately, since it was not mainstream music and was very fresh it never could compete with the pop music and other radio friendly genres of music, most of them are forgotten now.
Even today a lot of underground rock bands don’t know of this heritage. That’s one of the problems, the cultural movements and artistic traditions have come to a sudden death by the 79 revolution, and the generation born after that is unfamiliar with work and efforts of previous musicians.
IB – We cannot avoid thinking about Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. The book has a curious and sad passage for anyone who loves music: it’s she, buying her k-7 tapes on black market, like drugs, and her parents bringing hidden posters of Iron Maiden and Kim Wilde. Of course you have gone through similar things. How was live being considered a criminal for liking music?
Ardalan Payvar: We’ve all had similar experiences living in Iran. Getting your hands on a Metallica poster or cassette tape was not easy, and when you got something like that you really treated it like a treasure.
IB – How this distancing has influenced the way you see Iran? There is hope for better days in regards to freedom?
Arash: One can not live without hope, we all would love to see this grey cloud of radicalism disappear from the blue skies of our country, and the region. You look at the pictures of small cities in Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon in the 60’s and the 50’s, people were poor, but they were happy. I have seen pictures of jazz performances in tiny remote towns of Iran from the 60’s, people lived a life that was a lot more peaceful and joyful, Muslims, Christians, Baha’is…. but now the cultural fabric of the region is getting torn by radical Islam, we hope to see an end to this soon. We hope we can see that region smiling again.
The second part: an expatriated music career.
* Due to a ridiculous amount of ridiculous reasons, we had this content all this time and it still remained unpublished. So, for everyone ever reading this: We’re sorry.