After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, the ban on female solo singing in Iran became a form of political violence against women artists as an effort to shape a new national-religious identity for Iranian society. It not only restricts women’s artistic expression but also sends a clear message that women’s voices should not be publicly heard, reinforcing gender inequality and male dominance in Iranian music. As a form of symbolic and hidden violence, this policy has had deep psychological and social consequences, including the suppression of artistic identity and repeated experiences of marginalization and trauma. Although feminist ethnomusicologists have discussed the general impact of this ban, fewer studies frame it through trauma studies, particularly within the wartime context of the 1980s. This project addresses that gap by examining how female musicians responded to these structural injustices and political violence, focusing on the social consequences of their decisions to emigrate or remain.

Under these conditions, female solo singing itself becomes a form of resistance. Over more than four decades of restriction, women have developed various strategies to maintain their presence in music production. With the expansion of the internet and social media, new platforms have allowed women to amplify their voices collectively, contributing to recent social changes, especially the women-led movement “Woman, Life, Freedom.” Overall, this research explores the relationship between gendered sound and political power, highlighting how artistic resistance challenges political restriction and also serves as a vehicle for trauma recovery.

This presentation examines women's resistance in contemporary Iranian public space, focusing on the dome of the Shah Mosque in Isfahan. It explores this symbolic structure, celebrated since the Safavid era as an architectural masterpiece and acoustic space designed to amplify religious sounds and male religious authority, and argues that this site has become an important stage for sonic and political resistance. Drawing on how recent actions, particularly women singing beneath this dome and circulating videos on social media, have transformed the space's symbolic meaning and traditional function, this presentation demonstrates how these performances, which directly challenge the post-1979 restrictions on women's public singing, are not merely artistic acts but constitute a socio-political gesture. Methodologically, this research analyzes the Shah Mosque dome not as an architectural structure, but as an active medium whose acoustic properties have become a tool for resistance, allowing historically excluded voices to resonate. This qualitative study is positioned at the interdisciplinary intersection of ethnomusicology, sound studies, spatial theory, gender studies, and media studies. It draws on an interview, autoethnography, analysis of sonic-spatial situations, and a case study of a widely circulated social media performance. The theoretical framework builds on Brandon LaBelle's concept of "Sonic Agency," showing how sound becomes a tool for resistance and negotiation with systems of domination, and is extended through Laudan Nooshin's work on Iranian musical cyberspace to account for the online dimension of these performances.

This paper discusses how Iranian musicians navigate continuous crises in successive waves of protest, repression, and war since 2022. I argue that an increasingly radicalized political atmosphere has pressured Iranian artists to take a side in a perceived binary of “overthrow” versus “reform.” This paper centers on the music and reception of Shervin to trace these shifting political conditions shaping music-making in Iran. He first rose to almost instant fame when he released “Baraye” (“Because of”), whose lyrics are a collage assembled from tweets posted under #MahsaAmini, a viral hashtag through which users articulated their reasons to protest during the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Through rapid circulation, the piece became a sonic emblem of the uprising, even as Shervin was immediately arrested and pressured to delete it from Instagram. This placed Shervin’s subsequent online presence and musical releases under heightened attention. Since then, Shervin has faced not only state surveillance but also close scrutiny from dissident audiences unwilling to tolerate any perceived compromise with the regime—whether in his songs, social media contents, or career decisions such as applying for official permits. Drawing on an ethnography of social media, I ask what it means to sustain a musical persona amid persistent uncertainty shaped by arbitrary state restrictions and shifting public expectations. Building on Miriam Cooke and Lauren Berlant, I listen to the ways that musicians negotiate music-making, dissidence, and the affective politics of contested claim-making in Iran.