This paper studies Iranian female vocalists’ embodiment of identity and musical aesthetics in virtual space following the Islamic regime’s intensified restrictions on female musicians’ voices and public appearances after the 1979 revolution. Before 1979, many women musicians and vocalists had achieved professional recognition primarily through performing for the highly regarded Golha program (“Flowers of Persian Song and Poetry”) on national radio (Lewison 2015), which was broadcast from 1956 to 1979 during the Pahlavi regime. However, the cultural reformations of 1979 closed the public stage for female musicians and their artistry. Never authorized to be officially accessible in Iran, the Golha recordings were collected privately as a national archive comprising the heritage of female vocalists whose voices have been silenced ever since. Today, nearly five decades after restrictions on women’s voices and visibility on stage and blocking virtual platforms such as YouTube in Iran, many female vocalists use social media to recreate the pre-revolutionary repertoire. They broadcast their audio-visual productions and musical identities primarily through Instagram. In this study, I investigate the vocal and visual portrayal of female identity and new directions of aesthetic expression in the virtual space. Through comparative examples of musicality and visibility on Radio Golha and national television with today’s social media, especially Instagram, and observing them as “re-emerging archives,” I argue the vulnerable embodiment of female identity and social aesthetics of Iranian music within the political frames and issues of accessibility. I examine how women musicians participate in building virtual archives as their self-images and identities.

Over the past few years, Latin American countries have witnessed a series of shifts in political and sociocultural dynamics. Cultural critique and advocating against social injustice have utilized music as a tool to communicate, to empower, to propose new cultural agendas and sonic expression. However, global popular music genres such as rock, reggaeton, or cumbia seemingly perpetuate a predominant music industry that favors those in the Global North. In La Paz, Bolivia, for example, local sounds have traditionally contributed to democracies, dictatorships or wars but nowadays popular music genres continue to be strongly present in Paceño (citizens of La Paz) music. Based on ethnographic and musicological research, this paper examines how música popular [popular music] constructs and constitutes Paceño identity amidst musicians’ use of global trends. I explore songs created and inspired by Paceño women on a common thread trying to describe how the city sounds. I address the role of music creation and how musicians negotiate globality, nationality, and social injustice in their compositions. I argue that although Paceño music utilizes predominantly musical global trends, social struggles, political transformations, and the status quo of Bolivian women transpire through música popular. I also engage in broader conversations about the importance of studying sound in the global South, the role of women in Bolivian society, how place affects the way people listen and relate to the world, and the possible ways in which music can also inform government officials in understanding their society.

This paper examines the little-known musical practices of female political prisoners during the first decade of Francisco Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975) in Spain. In the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and during the first years of Franco’s regime, Female political prisoners included underage, adult, and senior women. Prisons were overcrowded, and food, health, and basic sanitary conditions were scarce. Furthermore, Francoist prison authorities and staff used the management of these limited resources to punish and humiliate inmates who had been accused or sentenced for politically related crimes. Musical practices within the prison system were strictly controlled. Apart from Catholic and fascist anthems and a limited selection of Spanish “regional” songs, music-making was forbidden. Nevertheless, political prisoners succeeded in singing and creating new songs in jail. They found means to do it in a mutually constitutive way such that singing was key for the maintenance of their political identity behind bars and their ability to organize politically facilitated in-prison singing. This paper fills a lacuna in the scholarship about Spanish music. It pulls from archival materials held at the Historical Archive of Barcelona to highlight these inmates’ contributions to the development of twentieth-century anti-fascist music in Europe. In addition to showing the leading role of women in countering Franco’s dictatorship and the rise of European fascism, the paper evidences the use of Latin American music genres (tangos, rancheras) as “raw materials” for the creation of this unknown anti-fascist music repertoire.