actual Iranian music news

I was needling Spencer Ackerman about this but didn't get a rise. It's applicable to Noel Maurer too.

No-One Knows About Persian Cats is a cracking little film; it's a pseudo-documentary about Iran's music underground, by the Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi and a small who's who of Iranian music. As a result, it could almost have been designed for Spackerman in the way Jeremy Clarkson said Vulcan 607 could have been designed for him.

One thing that comes through are the permanently-operating factors in the human terrain. For example, there's always a fixer - the guy who doesn't actually contribute any music themselves, but does know people who know people who have access to studio time and hall bookings and dodgy government permits. It's the Tony Wilson ethic. Hamed Behdad plays him as someone of permanent charm and near perfect unreliability, never clear whether he's totally committed to success or on the point of making off with the funds - one reading of the grim ending is that he's the grass.

The metal band's guitarist works - like Tony Iommi - in a metalworking factory, and the band rehearse in a shed full of cowshit on the edge of town, although paradoxically their lyrics are all about positive thinking. The rappers are slightly thuggish and given to lyrics like "the class struggle oppresses us!" which may have worked better in the original. The indie band are a bit painfully sensitive and notably more middle-class, the sort of people these guys are thinking of.

So far, so good; anything that reminds us that Iran is not actually Nazi Germany or the far side of the moon is politically welcome. So much of this is immediately recognisable if you've ever sat in a Mini with rust holes and a 1x12 Valvestate box on your lap, with a curry balanced on the top.

Of course, making music in an authoritarian society has its special problems. Everyone except the rappers is desperate to leave and the plot revolves around rounding up passports, visas, and means of payment, as the East Germans used to say. And getting the Ministry of Virtue permit to actually put on a gig. In the meantime, there's a constant round of rehearsals in cellars and in breezeblock sheds on rooftops; incredibly complex informal building seems to be a bit of a feature of Tehran.

And there's a sticky end at the hands of the militia, or not quite at their hands enough to prove it. In that way the police tend to have.

The BBC has the soundtrack as streams here.