Dangerous dances

A 70-year-old provincial fishmonger has challenged a ban on singing and dancing imposed Iran’s conservative clerics and won. Dressed in a white suit Sadegh Bana Motejaded dances in the market of Rasht in Gilan province singing a folk song. Fellow stall holders clap, sing along, and cheer “Ow, ow, ow,” a local cry expressing surprise and excitement, the Financial Times reported. A local eccentric “Uncle Sadegh” has become a national celebrity whose performances have gone viral.

A video of his late September song-and-dancecirculated on Instagram and caught the attention of countrymen and women and a disk jockey who jazzed up the performance. Consequently, his social media followers multiplied. This exposure caught the attention of the authorities who detained and interrogated Bana Motejaded and several of his cheerful chums, who, according to some sources, were beaten.

Iran’s clerical establishment as a whole considers dancing and singing debauchery and categorise it as totally unacceptable behaviour. Mullahs who have close ties to Iran’s dominant hardliners reject most music, especially pop music which inspires dance. Iranian fundamentalists are not alone in banning dance and music, some Christian evangelicals take the came line and prohibit cinemas as well. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have not only banned playing or listening to music, but also confiscated and burned musical instruments to prevent the “corruption” of citizens by music and musicians.

Gilan province’s deputy police commander Brigadier-General Hossein Hassanpour, said police had acted because the distribution of the videos had “violated public morals” and “broken norms.”

Bana Motejaded’s treatment met with outrage across the country and he and his friends were released without being formally charged with the crime of indulging in immoral practices. Nothing has been said about his routine inspiring a movement which has been joined by nearly a million Iranians protesting against the attempt of Iran’s clerical rulers to dictate what they can and cannot do.

New York Times correspondent Farnaz Fassihi wrote that his gyrations have founded a “dance craze” gripping men and women of all ages who chant his song while dancing “on the streets, in shops, at sports stadiums, in classrooms, malls restaurants, gyms, parties, and everywhere else they congregate.” In Tehran the craze has been dubbed the “happiness campaign.” It is a new, revolutionary fashion in civil disobedience which has confounded the mullahs.

“Uncle Sadegh” is not the first Iranian to use music and dance to protest controls over all aspects of Iranian life. Iran International revealed that on Women’s Day, March 8th, last year, a brief video went viral of five young women wearing loose clothing but without legally-required headscarves dancing in Tehran to the song “Calm Down” by Selena Gomez and Nigerian singer Rema. The security forces promptly hunted down the young women as this defiant video was released shortly after nation-wide protests had subsided over the death of the Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in morality police custody for improperly wearing her headscarf.

The five were identified, warned against further dancing and released but later detained for 48 hours until they made a recorded confession and expressed remorse.

Music and dance have long been instruments of political protest. “We shall overcome,” the song of the US civil rights movement in 1959 has long been the anthem of black and brown US citizens seeking equality with whites. The song was also adopted by labour and political movements during the Cold War, including the 1989 Czech uprising against the Soviet occupation. Northern Ireland’s civil rights movement sang the song in protest against British army detentions of Irish Catholic activists.

The music of Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis nourished Greeks and the Greek-speaking world during the repressive reign of the military junta from 1967 until 1974. When the US-backed colonels took power in a coup, Theodorakis — who wrote the music for the film “Zorba the Greek” — became a symbol of resistance to their rule. His music was banned, and he was jailed for five months before being interned at a notorious concentration camp. Following pressure from world-famous composers, singers, and politicians, he was eventually allowed to go to Paris in 1970. After the junta’s fall and his return to Greece, he abandoned the left to tun for a centrist seat in the Greek parliament with the aims of ending polarisation and healing his country’s wounds. After resigning from parliament, he campaigned for human rights and the environment, directed the Hellenic State orchestras, and composed symphonic and ballet music. Theodorakis is a example of a revolutionary composer who left more than 1,000 works when he died at the grand old age of 96 in 2021.

For the 75 years since the Nakba (Catastrophe) Palestinian ppatriotic songs and traditional dances have been a means used by Palestinians to reassert their identity and protest their dispersal and occupation by Israel. Patriotic poetry composed by prominent writers, notably Mahmoud Darwish, has been put to music. Uprooted communities’ local songs and anthems maintain emotional ties to the Palestinians’ Israeli conquered homeland. During the first Intifada. 1987-1993, a man with a recorder used to play nationalist songs at the entrance to Damascus Gate in occupied Jerusalem’s Old City. In recent years, Palestinian youths have adopted hip-hop in Arabic and English as a way to tell of Palestinian resistance.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that Egyptians gathered in a historic quarter of Cairo and connected to Israel’s brutal war on Gaza by singing the song. “Ya Falasteeniya.” This song had become a “rallying cry after the Arab defeat in the 1967 war with Israel.” The Post quoted oud player Hany El Hamzawi as saying, “All the Arab countries sing these kinds of songs. They penetrate your soul.”