Voices of Resistance
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2024-12-06T11:43:55-08:00
Within the Women, Life, Freedom Uprising, music has become a medium for activists to voice their opinions and become anthems for the movement. Songs like “Baraye” have been at the forefront of music in WLF by constructing lyrics from a stream of twitter posts to highlight the reality of everyday life in Iran and becoming the recognized anthem of the movement. However, it is worth taking a closer look at other works produced, namely within the genre of hip-hop.
Originating in African-American communities within the United States, hip-hop came out of the rage and frustration young African Americans experienced through generational and systematic oppression. Much like Baraye, early hip-hop songs brought light unto the harsh reality of everyday life in black communities. Fastfoward to 2010, the Arab Spring, a wave of pro-democracy movements began in the Middle East and North Africa. Arab artists much like the African-Americans felt as though their governments were not responding to traditional forms of protest which led them to adopt the same means of voicing their discontent, rap. In Tunisia, El General’s “Rais Lebled” rose to be played and sung in protest in Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain. In Lydia, small artists would post their work on social media with no indication of name, manager, or record label in attempts to circumvent government crackdowns and tracking procedures. 12 year ol MCA Abdul, in Gaza, took after his idol Tupac and began posting videos of himself rapping about hope and possibility for the oppressed Palestinians. There are countless other examples of Arab youth using hip-hop and its history of being an antagonist to government oppression to bring awareness to their plight in a way that spreads like wildfire.
The Women, Life, Freedom movement is not an exception to this trend. Toomaj Salehi’s “Rathole” aggressively calls out the Iranian state as an oppressor and goes as far as to warn the regime and those who stand for it. Although Salehi’s music is much more aggressive than its predecessors, it is a great representation of the general feeling of the Iranian public. Instead of calling for reform, “Ratehole” demands regime change which within recent years, is what the Iranian public wants as well. With this being said Salehi’s and other rap artist in Iran play a crucial part in the Women, Life, Freedom movement as a way of representing the public’s opinion of the regime as a whole, its inflammatory and tendency to garner millions of views on social media also makes hip-hop a crucial part in gathering international support and attention.
-Mathew Montiel
