Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran, popular music and its associated entertainment industry were banned. In the shadow of post-revolutionary government penalties, a once-vibrant public musical life was relegated indoors to black-market VHS recordings produced abroad and the auditory remnants of the past—music cassettes. This paper draws on ethnographic interviews with five middle-class women whose twenties—a crucial period in their lives for the development of their sense of self and womanhood—coincided with the Pahlavi era boom of “Iranian pop” (musiqi-ye pāp). Inspired by coeval Western popular music and portraying an emancipated female identity, Iranian pop was danced by these women in progressive venues such as discos and nightclubs. Building on previous literature (Breyley 2010, Hemmasi 2020) and supported by an ethnography of these women, focusing on what I call their “musical everydayness” in pre-revolutionary Tehran, I argue that Iranian pop provided an “atmospheric situation” (Riedel 2019) in which women could construct and articulate their “Iranian modern womanhood.” I use this term to describe a state of engaging in social settings with a bodily presence beyond traditional boundaries, facilitated through an increased agency in negotiating feminine body in mixed-gender public venues. Drawing on ethnography and theories of music and identity (DeNora 1999) and music and “the collective” (Shelemay 2011), I then contend that Iranian pop continued to be consumed after the revolution as a medium enabling the creation of a lost social environment tied to “Iranian modern womanhood”, within closed doors to continue embodying pre-revolutionary identity.

Sufism, which has deep roots in Iranian culture and history, has experienced significant transformations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, particularly in relation to the status of Sufi women. Ethnomusicologists have extensively studied Sufi women’s leadership across various regions of the world, yet the status of Iranian Sufi women remains understudied. This paper investigates the evolving status and roles of women in the Qadiriyya Sufi order within the contemporary socio-cultural context of Sanandaj, Iran. At the intersection of religious practices and gender norms, this study examines the shift of women from passive participants to active leaders in a traditionally male-dominated domain. By focusing on a case study of Khalifah Fouzieh, a female Sufi master, along with a literature review and three months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2023, I argue that Sufi women challenge gender-specific limitations to assert their spirituality and authority within the order. They utilize music, protest-oriented ritual practices, and social media platforms to claim agency in both public and virtual spaces. Indeed, they break policies on religious minorities, gender limitations, and gender segregation laws which were imposed by the government on Iranian women since the 1979 revolution. Ultimately, by centering Iranian Sufi women as pivotal agents within Qadiriyya rituals, it highlights musical and religious practices as transformative forces shaping and changing gender norms and women’s societal status in contemporary Iran.

Multimedia supplement:

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In The Story of Daughters of Quchan, the Iranian historian Afsaneh Najmabadi investigates the necessity of “writing women into the history of Iranian modernity and writing a gendered history of that experience” (1998: 9). This idea, foundational to Najmabadi’s influential career, continues to reverberate today as efforts to include women in the histories of Iranian music gain traction in a limited, though flourishing subfield of inquiry. Yet, musicologists like Marcia Citron have long argued that in adding women’s names to music histories and canons, the “why must be addressed […] otherwise, women’s accomplishments remain window dressing or token contributions” (2007: 210-211). My paper juxtaposes these scholars’ ideas with my ongoing ethnographic research with Iranian female instrumentalists to elucidate how ethnographic research, typically concerned with the recent past, could inform the future historiographies of women and music in Iran. I propose that a dual examination of female musicians’ life stories alongside a critical analysis of their musical performances not only opens new spaces for women’s inclusion in the canons and histories of Iranian music but also interrogates the underlying assumptions that have historically marginalized women from realms of musical recognition and authority. Therefore, by framing female musicians as both women and skillful musicians, ethnography attends to the intricate intersections of gender and musical authority to reveal and challenge ways in which male hegemony perpetuates women’s exclusion despite occasionally recognizing a select few women’s musical achievements.