Can Rap save Iran?

On April 24, 12 days after the fundamentalist Islamic government of Iran sentenced to death dissident Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, Rap & Revolution Iran, a two-and-a-half-hour documentary made by 33-year-old Iranian German filmmaker, Omid Mirnour posted on YouTube.

Rap is the resistance music genre of choice for Iranians. Its cadence and rhythm suit protest rhymes. As the film says, Iranian rappers are “contributing to a legacy of great poets,” such as Rumi, Hafez and Ferdowsi. The Islamic regime forbids having a musical instrument in public—even if it is in a carrying case. They confine making music to computers, which lends itself to beatmaking. In contrast to Western rap, so much of which denigrates women, Iranian rappers use their carefully chosen words to support, defend and push back against the oppression of women. “Rap is the people’s voice,” as the film quotes Salehi.

With Rap & Revolution Iran, Mirnour puts Iranian rap in the context of revolting against the Iranian government. “Documentaries about Iran are one-sided,” Mirnour says in flawless English. “The regime is bad, but you get to know nothing about the people or the culture of Iran. I wanted to show the beauty, the culture, the richness Iran has, and to give an in-depth dive into Iranian rap music and the circumstances under which musicians are living as well as the music and the underground scene. What it means to be an Iranian rapper.”

@iraniomid

Scene about Toomaj from my RAP & REVOLUTION IRAN Documentary:  Toomaj is one of the most popular rappers of recent years. The Son of Iran, as he is called by some, has already been arrested several times for his music and videos which he posted on social media. This has made him an icon of the resistance. He protested loudly against human rights violations and posted videos with appeals to join street protests. He has been charged for “corruption on earth” and recently sentenced to death. Toomaj has shown us all how the basic essence of rap still works. How rap can stand up for the voice of the oppressed and against inequality. Therefore, we must now raise our voices for Toomaj and all other unjustly convicted people.  If you want to get to know more about iranian revolutionary rappers like Toomaj, watch the documentary „Rap & Revolution Iran“ on YouTube! #toomaj #toomajsalehi #freetoomaj #toomaj_salehi #irani #rapfarsi #documentary #hiphop #persianrap #persian #Iran #rapmusic #persiantiktok #iranian #iranrap #rapfars #farsi #farsitiktok #farsisong #hiphop

♬ Originalton – OMID

Mirnour was born and raised in Germany. He spent the first 14 summers of his life visiting relatives in Iran. He grew up with rap music, absorbing rhymes in English and a cross-section of European languages. Pre-social media and DSPs, Iranian musicians distributed their art through underground networks. On his annual trips to Iran, Mirnour’s cousins supplied him with CDs of Iranian rappers. Their rhymes against oppression and about political matters resonated strongly with Mirnour, making him an aficionado.

Rap & Revolution Iran is in German (and Farsi) with English subtitles. In addition to the footage and interviews that Mirnour shot, the film includes a wealth of credited sourced footage including snippets from filmmaker Till Schauder’s When God Sleeps, a documentary on Iranian musician Shahin Najafi, possibly the only other film made that speaks about Iranian rap. Rap & Revolution Iran expertly cuts original and sourced footage together for a rapid-paced and impactful narrative. The graphics are modern and dynamic, giving the film a fresh feel and bringing the Islamic Republic’s brutal actions of the last 45 years into current context.

Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 when the hardline regime took over the governing seat of Iran, they have removed many freedoms. This is particularly stringent when it comes to women, and to the arts. In September 2022, after the death of a 22-year-old woman, Jina Mahsa Amini, at the hands of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, protests broke out in Iran and across the globe among the Iranian diaspora.

In the last couple of years, Amini’s murder is one of more than  a thousand at the hands of the IRGC and government officials. Her death was a powder keg moment. Iranian rappers inside and outside of Iran have been rhyming about the injustices of the Islamic Republic for years, but recent events made them more prolific. Translated lyrics emblazoned in Rap & Revolution Iran read: “My pen is my weapon and I’ve got a burial shroud in my backpack.”

The government has imprisoned and tortured these fearless rappers. In the case of Salehi, they issued the death penalty, which the regime administers by hanging from a crane. The clerics are terrified of these articulate poets whose words strike an international chord. The survival of the government is dependent on squashing women and rappers. To quote the film, “If you want to stand up for your rights, you have to be ready to die.”

Rap & Revolution Iran was born out of RAP4AZADI or “Rap for Freedom,” a powerful three-minute short Mirnour created featuring German and Iranian rappers speaking about what is happening in Iran. Mirnour followed withCorruption on Earth named after the nebulous capital crime with which the Islamic regime arbitrarily charges its citizens. The 11-minute film is a satirical look at the Islamic regime’s atrocities. Once Mirnour had established rappers in his viewfinder for RAP4AZADI, he extended their screen time to interviews. They are the talking heads of Rap & Revolution Iran, among them Justina, Nimo, Säye Skye, Xatar, Takt32.

The film has user-friendly chapters. It dedicates some to individual Iran-based rappers: Salehi, Saman Yasin, Behrad Alikenari, all of whom are in prison, as well as vocal Iranian rappers living outside Iran, Hichkas and Pishro among them. It gives plenty of screen time to female Iranian rappers for whom speaking out is infinitely more dangerous, as Iran does not allow women to sing or perform in public as a solo voice.

Rap & Revolution Iran is not strictly a music documentary. It shines a spotlight on the tradition of music in Iran, encompassing dancing and celebrations, visual art including graffiti, literature with poetry at its core. It speaks about the political reality under the Islamic regime in the context of history and culture. It unpacked the illegality of releasing and distributing music that the Iranian government hasn’t authorized. Musicians do not receive any remuneration from DSPs because of the US sanctions against the Islamic Republic. They’re doing it because they feel compelled.

The same applies to Mirnour, who self-financed Rap & Revolution Iran and made it available on YouTube as soon as he finished the final cut. The platform has put age restrictions on all Mirnour’s visual projects, which has limited his ability to promote them. He’s counting on word of mouth and shared links to get exposure for his film—not to earn from it, but to get its message out.

“I have no financial support for this documentary, no broadcast channel or funding or sponsors,” he says. “The usual way for filmmakers is to make a movie, send it to film festivals, it makes the rounds for one or two years, then maybe you release it somewhere. For me, it was more important that everyone has access to it and that people see it for free.”

In response to whether Mirnour has hope for a free Iran, he says, “My name is hope! [“Omid” means “hope” in Farsi.] But Iranians have no weapons. They can’t go to war with the regime which has the IRGC. I don’t know what the solution is for the Iranian people, but I have hope they will do it somehow. If the whole country is against the politics, it can’t survive. You can’t oppress people. You can’t kill people. We have the slogan, ‘For every one that is killed, there are 1,000 people are behind them.’ If the regime goes longer, it will get weaker, and the people will get stronger. They can’t survive with the anger of the generation who grew up in this society and with social media sees how other people are living. It might not be soon, but in the end, no terrorist regime can survive. Their time will come.”