Power and Resistance in Iranian Popular Music

The case of popular music of post-revolution Iran is believed to be so controversial since being advocated as a challenge towards religious structures, political power and social injustice and gender issues by some officials, media and academics. This paper looks at wider opportunities of studying popular music – as a form of popular culture – with respect to the social relationships of power and resistant in comparison to some other literature that were limited to state political conceptualisation of power and resistant, amalgamation of popular music and art music, Eurocentric analysis over popular music in the Middle East as the production of social classes, as well as other pathological studies inside Iran concerning generation gap and youth culture. Alternatively, this paper revises repeatedly mentioned facts and events in literature and then (re)contextualises and reinterprets the concept of popular music, power and resistance in contemporary Iran. The result is a wider understanding of the social struggles over several discursive representation of popular culture beyond politics, social classes, religion, etc.