Gol-e Yakh

Kourosh Yaghmaei got his first instrument at ten, a santur from his father, and taught himself Persian traditional music because he had no teacher. At fifteen he bought an electric guitar and turned to Western records, and by the early 1970s he was leading a band with his brothers, blending Iranian melodies with the harmonies of psychedelic rock. In 1973, while still a university student in Tehran, he released his first single, "Gol-e Yakh". The title means ice flower, the name of the wintersweet shrub, and the song is a melancholy ballad about a love that survives the bitterest winters. The words came from his university friend Mahdi Akhavan Langeroudi, a modern Persian poet, with whom Yaghmaei is credited on the lyric. The single sold more than five million copies in Iran and made him famous, though his royalties stayed modest. It was translated and adapted into other languages and performed well beyond Iran's borders. Then the revolution came. After 1979 the new Islamic Republic set out to root out Western influence, and Yaghmaei's music was banned from the airwaves and shops, his name from the press, and he was barred from recording or performing live. The song survived in the diaspora and in memory, and a 2011 compilation from the American label Now-Again introduced him to new listeners abroad. In 2018 Nas built his track "Adam and Eve" around a sample of it. A song about love outlasting winter turned out to outlast a ban.