State of Iranian Contemporary Alternative music (Iranian Rock?): Shen Band
I love rock ’n roll, so put another 'toman in the jukebox, baby.
I wrote my first review of Contemporary Iranian Alternative music way back in 2007, I wanted to kick off a new tradition of deep, tough, and fair analysis of our new alternative musical output. Seeing sites like Zirzamin, and helping them figure out a new narrative come out into the Iranosphere was a sense of pride. At the time, Arash Sobhani’s Kiosk band was one of the first groups I thought worthy of serious analysis.
(Stay tuned for my upcoming review of Kiosk’s new Rock opera “Sweet Destiny”/“Payan-e-Shirin”)
Up until then, Iranian music was dominated by sad 6/8 drivel, which while fun on a warm summer drive to Chaloos (or Santa Monica!), really starts to drill a hole in your head when you are forced to listen to it for say, I don't know, like maybe 50 years! Also I think excessive Beshkaning may cause severe knuckle joint damage…
I could never quite get on board with the feel good New-Islam-Crypto-Gay-Pop-Shit that Arian Band cranked out. Even the Chris De-Burgh scam was De-Boring. Same for Benyamin who somehow managed to get this far, on the felony crime of Autotuning. Sasy Mankan caught my ear for about a month with his delicious irreverence for the over-dolled up Iranian party babe. The “Kimia Kardashian” joke in ridiculously high heels. But that stopped too. Because well, it simply had to…
After a couple of years championing what I collectively started calling new Iranian rock, helping put on concerts for the 50-something “Iranian Kids in America”, I watched as my fellow reviewers slowly took the mantle, and we all continued to reach out for new progressive Iranian music to report on, and introduce to a necessarily starved audience.
NOTE: According to several people I spoke to while writing this piece, Iranians en-masse, don’t apparently know what “Rock” is, and many will undoubtedly misunderstand the term “Rock Music” as meaning either Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Metallica, etc.. I was also told that these folks will automatically immediately tune out when they read the term “Iranian Rock”. Because they will think it means Iranians playing Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, or Metallica. So, for purposes of clarification, for the lowest Iranian denominator, when I say “ Iranian Rock”, I am referring to a new form of Modern Iranian Contemporary music, that uses an electric guitar, connected to an amp, with a drum set, and any other instrument, or vocal production element, that the band likes to incorporate to express their musical inclinations. (Which incidentally could very well include Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, or Metallica etc.)
What is known (and agreed upon) is that Iranians are so starved for something new musically (and any form of “Iranian Art”), that they will eat anything that remotely gives them permission to think freely. And the beauty of True music is in it’s Truth. Which in real life Iranians are necessarily afraid of. But in those funny feeling tingly sexy nether regions where a pair of cheap earbuds, or a reasonably good car stereo can take you, the sheer bliss of a mind opened, feels like taking off your sweat stained hejab and sticking your head out the sunroof and letting your hair fly! Not that I would know what a hejab-less head feels like! Because I’m a man(child).
But sadly, it seems my critic-brethren have dropped the ball. Hence this re-Think Piece. Reviews are all but non-existent. Gone are albums. Gone is a body of work to deep dive into. Music now amounts to “Singles”, bad Instagram or TikTok videos shot on a phone, slap-cut and filtered on the Instagram or Tik-Tok video editor. Did I say on a phone? No concerts, no live performances that expose reality. Raw and uncut.
Even “Underground Iranian Rock” turned out to not actually be “underground”, but more “Basement Rock”, usually fully plugged in, softwared out the ass. Part of the opulent appetizers in the opulent basement parties of opulent homes in northern Tehran. So rich, it would make the Shah blush. Iranian Basement Rock is not played and heard, dangerously in dangerous underground cafes and speakeasies, as one would dream and hope. Always conveniently out of the earshot of the nosey bribe-sniffing Basij.
Underground music is supposed to be played and listened to in spite of the authorities. It is not the kind of music played in comfortable private homes, for some “Rich Kid of Tehran” hosting a VIP by invitation-only pseudo-mini-rave. While Maman-joon and Baba-joon are out of town visiting Amoo-joon who’s stashed the family’s cash in Nice. How nice!
But Hey! Who’s bitter?
So if you filter out all the noise and don’t do any digging, there's not much Iranian music to get excited about. Maybe the “Cheshm” I am “Zadding” (giving it the Evil Eye) on it, will change (some of) that. Or all of it. Following is a short chat I had with Kaveh Hashemi, the founder of Shen (sand) Band. Shen is one of the best Iranian bands I’m listening to a lot now, that is carving out what I think is a very interesting space in the New Iranian Rock area. Maybe bands like Shen can save us from the horrendous drain Iranian Pop is going down. Here goes nothing…
Band Name: Shen Band
Band Founder: Kaveh Hashemi
Location: Montreal, Quebec Canada
Shen Band’s Cover/Reinterpretation of Sting’s “Fragile”
Either I’m lucky, and the 10 years I’ve been self-banished from all things Iranian, things aren’t as bad as they seemed 10 years ago, or the state of Iranian Alternative Music is not as dire as I feared. Good news either way. I can finally take off my proverbial Hejab and let my long metaphorical hair fly free out the sunroof. My Stealthy Freedom indeed!
I first heard Shen Band years ago, their hit song “Shansi Chand Ta Kish” always resonated with me because having wrapped up my odyssey with the “Rostam: Tales of the Shahnameh” comics, it had a line that cut me to the core, “Rostam o’ Sohrab ra ki beh jooneh ham andakht?…” and the rest of the catalog was a very interesting original body of work. At first I thought I heard the interpretation of The Moody Blues combined with Blue Oyster Cult with a hint of Jethro Tull (the ballads).
But as Kaveh likes to tell me, I am wrong.
Thankfully, when I recently caught up with Kaveh , he was still at the same number, and best of all, has still been “kicking it old school” with some new songs and even more great ideas in development.
BB: Thanks again for agreeing to be part of this piece, how have you been holding up and how has the covid pandemic affected your music? What's your output like?
KH: Thank you for "resurrecting" this topic and including us in it. So to answer your question, it's been rough going musically especially since we were just beginning to gather a bit of a "momentum" in terms of exposure just prior to the start of Covid, which was then obviously quickly halted by it in the process. In the interim period, I've made a few videos of older material mostly but it's been rather quiet otherwise.
BB: Are you working on a concept album or are you (like most) working on one single at a time?
KH: Most of my work up until very recently has been in (concept) album format but you have to move with the times and nowadays "singles" rule so I doubt very much that I would go back to recording whole albums in one shot. It's just not feasible.
BB: I was reconnected with you when I recently saw your re-imagination of Sting's "Fragile". What made you choose that song?
KH: Well, obviously to begin with, I like the song, there's a certain Persian/middle eastern vibe in the guitar parts and what not, and I think the lyrics very much reflect these crazy times we're living in. Plus, I'm always being asked why I haven't done a cover yet. So it was the right time for it, I guess.
BB: Your idea to put Farsi lyrics on Fragile was intriguing. How hard was it to write in Farsi for an English song.
KH:I think generally speaking, it's very difficult to convey the exact meaning of a piece in another language, especially if you want the verses to "rhyme", which was one of my main concerns. Luckily for me, the translation of this particular song came to me pretty easily. Perhaps, I had been working on it "subconsciously" for the longest time and so it just poured out of me, aided by a sweet bottle of red on a rainy Covid night.
BB: A lot of your lyrics deal with Iranian life in absentia, and you seem to be exploring the diasporic conditions of living a painful exile outside of Iran. It's been 42 years since 1979, don't you think you will ever get over it? Can't we just get along? And move on?
KH:The short answer is NO. It is the defining event for our generation. That being said, however, I believe my lyrics are not particular to a time or place necessarily. I speak of the human condition, and as such, I think they're pretty "universal" actually.
BB: One of the things I like most about Shen is that the music isn't Iranian, that's for sure, but I'm not able to peg exactly what it is trying to be like. I know I like it, but I can't place it.
KH: I'm not trying to be anybody but me, which is to say that I like to have a lot of variety in my writing, different vibes, different styles, different topics, etc. from song to song, which is evident If one were to listen to my entire catalogue. Admittedly, I do not have many "happy" tunes, which goes back to your earlier question about our life in exile.
Another thing is that often, I also like to mess around with song structures(format), wherein the music starts in "one place" and goes on a journey through several changes and ends up somewhere else entirely. Alas, I also have a lot of your typical verse/chorus pieces.
BB: There are a few bands like Shen that are carving this new path of what Contemporary Iranian Music means. What do you think is the biggest impediment for new Iranian alternative rock or popular music to smash the old 6/8 mold (as in moldy!), which you know I've been a death match enemy of for years.
KH: There are many factors. But let’s just start with your "wording", which btw, is not specific to you, everybody uses it. I understand why people might call our music "alternative". But what does "alternative" mean really? Is U2 alternative? Were The Police alternative? What about Radiohead? These are/were all huge mainstream bands doing mega-business commercially. Pop they didn't do but "Popular" they are. I don't subscribe to the "alternative", or especially "underground" tag. I just think we're doing serious music, which is not for the dance crowd.
BB: Thanks for sending me the new video, of your song “The Invisible(s)” (Naamareeha) which I imagine is about the 2009 Green Revolution/Election, is it a new recording? It sounds like a completely new song compared to original.
KH: It's actually an older tune, maybe you’re remembering the acoustic/unplugged version you said you liked a lot. This version feels new because I reworked it a lot, improving the sound and video quality.
BB: Now that we are starting to move out of Covid and things seem to be getting back to normal, (whatever that means!) are you making set plans for getting back to concerts soon?
KH: That's certainly my hope. But my bigger goal is to be able to do more & better videos and to share them on all the different platforms because as you might know Shen is still very much an unknown quantity and I think if my stuff gets the necessary exposure which I believe it deserves a lot of people will be very much surprised.
Post-Covid, there seems to be a starved palate for Iranian bands exploring and interpreting the nebulous definition of whatever your definition (I know what mine is) of “Iranian Rock is these days. Whatever Music is. Whatever any of it means now.
The good news is all the various platforms for listening to music, have made indulging in the full body of work produced by bands like Shen, easily accessible and effortless. I find them all the time, and listening to Iranians taking chances on new interpretations and explorations in their ongoing search for a touchstone gem, is a much valued and a cherished joy.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shenbandmtl/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ShenBand
Website: http://shenband.com/
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