Iran

Two very different traditions. Persian classical music is built on the radif, a repertoire of melodic models grouped into twelve dastgah that musicians learn by heart and improvise from, usually setting classical poetry by Hafez, Rumi or Saadi. Alongside it is popular music: Vigen started Persian pop with a guitar in 1954, Googoosh made it enormous in the 1970s, and rock, rap and electronic music have all followed. Iran is also home to distinct regional traditions, including Kurdish, Azeri, Baluchi, Turkmen and the Gulf-coast music of Bushehr.

Almost everything about how it could be made and heard. Women were barred from singing solo to a general audience, a restriction that still stands, which is why Googoosh did not sing in public for twenty-one years and why singers like Marjan Vahdat record abroad. Much of the pop industry relocated to Los Angeles, where the Taraneh and Caltex labels kept it alive on cassette for listeners inside Iran. Music made domestically requires official permission, so a large amount of what gets made circulates unofficially instead.

The defining voice of Persian classical music for around half a century, and a national figure well beyond music. His 1979 recording of the Ramadan prayer Rabbana was broadcast on state radio every year for three decades. In 2009 he sided with protesters and asked that his voice no longer be used by the state, and the broadcast stopped. He largely stopped performing in Iran after that, and his death in 2020 brought crowds into the street.

Yes, and it has operated almost entirely without official permission since it started in 2000s Tehran. Hichkas is generally called its founder, and his records are built on Iranian melodic material rather than imported beats. Because the scene cannot get licences, venues or legal distribution, it grew through file sharing and now through streaming from abroad. Several of its best-known figures live outside the country.

Last reviewed: 2026-09

Because they are not the same thing. Persian is the majority language and the one most of this catalogue is sung in, but Iran also includes Kurdish, Azeri, Baluchi, Turkmen, Luri, Gilaki and Arab communities with their own repertoires and musical systems. The Kamkars perform Kurdish music from Sanandaj, and Saeid Shanbehzadeh plays the ney anban of the Gulf coast, where centuries of trade left audible African and Indian traces. Treating all of it as Persian music would flatten most of the country.