ON SALE AT OUR WEBSTORE AT RAPPCATS: KOUROSH YAGHMAEI – MALEK JAMSHID
Iranian rock Godfather Kourosh’s latest album, recorded 2003-2006. Banned in his home country, released to the world at last…
Words from Kourosh Yaghmaei:
Questions about the difficulties in and delay of releasing this album emphasize systematic censorship, cultural deletion and even cultural self-destruction, at a state level. They highlight the thoughts in the background of the media and a society hit by crisis, in which no voice of clear protest is heard in the world, not from human right organizations, let alone from the media inside Iran. No mention of this censorship, and torture on an artistic soul, along all social, technological and cultural transitions, in this current century, in a land where the world’s greatest [ancient] empire [in] Takhte Jamshid – The Gate of All Nations – or, as the Greeks called it, Persepolis was established 2500 ago.
It is impossible, in a few sentences, to explain the irreparable damages and the rubble of adversity that crumbled on me, my family and especially on my homeland in the past 37 years, with the occurrences of such cruelty – terrifying hell-like obstacles – that walking through them is not believable to others. This dark age of culture cannot be described in a few lines; there should be books written about it. Musicians were harassed and beaten in streets and their instruments were broken by boots. I, who was a leading popular artist in Iranian society, in just a few hours, was shown to be anti-culture, a perverted person. This was going on when my ability to earn any income for living expenses from my music was cut off. No light at the end of the tunnel. Iranian society was in awe watching all these horrific changes, in just a few hours.
People in Iran know me as the master, the pioneer and the king of modern and rock music, but to protest against this cultural deletion, this censorship, and the physical and mental tortures the government brings upon me, I am forced to decide not to release my works in my own homeland, for an unknown amount of time to come. This doesn’t mean I will stop working, and I will have a new album every a few years ready to present to my country.
In the end I must point that I only write these words to let the world know about this catastrophe, not to attract sympathy of others, which I hate. I believe in an unjust battle, to stand tall is better than to surrender.
In 2011, we released the anthology, Back From The Brink – Pre-Revolution Psychedelic Rock From Iran: 1973-1979. Here’s “Gole Yakh (Winter Sweet)” from that collection.
