People worldwide will be tuning into the 2025 Grammy Awards on Sunday night. With my kids now out of the house, I’m no longer in the loop regarding this year’s list of nominees. However, this week I want to resurface a Grammy-winning ballad from 2023—Baraye, by Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour. Within days of Hajipour’s release of Baraye on Instagram, the song was transformed into an international anthem of protest. The overnight hit inspired Shabnam Adiban, an Iranian graphic artist living in Canada, to independently produce a heart-stirring video illustrating Hajipour’s lyrics.
Iran’s Woman, Life, Freedom Movement
Hajipour’s inspiration for Baraye came in the wake of the murder of Mahsa Jina Amini. In September 2022, Amini died in the custody of Iran’s morality police after being detained for improperly wearing her hijab. Iran’s pious policing body, Gasht-e Ershad, was put in place in 1979 to “safeguard the revolution” and assert the Islamic regime’s rigid moral code in public spaces. Initially operated by vigilante groups, these guardians of decorum can arrest citizens who violate any number of absurd religious laws. Women are prime targets and are routinely detained for acts as innocuous as wearing sandals in public, riding a bicycle, or attending a professional soccer match (only male spectators can sit in the stands).
Often, those who are arrested are thrown in the back of a police van, roughed up, insulted, humiliated, and then released to a male family member. But depending on their lack of contrition or the mood of the arresting officer, it’s not uncommon for detainees to be whipped, beaten, or thrown in prison. Tragically, Amini, who was visiting Tehran from her hometown in Kurdistan when arrested, fell into this latter category. She was taken to a nearby police station, beaten, and hit in the head hard enough that she fell into a coma and died three days later.
News of Amini’s death sparked outrage throughout Iran and beyond. Protestors took to the streets of Iranian cities both urban and rural. The entire world, however, was watching. From Berlin to Tokyo to Los Angeles, tens of thousands protested in solidarity as part of a global feminist movement—Woman, Life, Freedom—to support the women of Iran.
Pop Song Turned Anthem
It was against this backdrop that Shervin Hajipour, a young Iranian singer-songwriter, composed his Grammy Award-winning song, Baraye. Like many artists living in Iran, Hajipour debuted his composition on Instagram. Unlike most other artists, however, Hajipour had the double-edged blessing of thousands of followers. Baraye struck a chord with Hajipour’s infuriated fan base and the song received more than 40 million views in the first 48 hours, simultaneously provoking shivers in the Ayatollah’s sandals.
In short order, agents of Gasht-e Ershad swooped in, arrested Hajipour, and forced him to remove his song from all social media platforms. But the cat was out of the bag. Hajipour was now an international superstar. This time, the fickle Iranian justice system, already under pressure from the world’s human rights organizations, chose caution. Within a week, they released Hajipour on bail, pending a review of his case.
As the ruling mollahs deliberated, millions of listeners continued to stream Baraye, Time Magazine named Hajipour as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World, and his song won the first ever special merit Grammy Award for Best Song For Social Change.
A United Iranian Diaspora
Approximately eight million Iranians live outside of Iran. Many of these people are high-achieving individuals who, in order to realize their life’s dream, felt compelled to leave their native country. Even living overseas, Iranian ex-pats often hesitated to publicly denounce their homeland’s theocratic regime. If word of their grievances made it back to Iran, punitive actions might be carried out against their family members. Since Amini’s death, however, the tendency toward silence has been shattered.
One shining example is Shabnam Adiban, a young graphic artist who immigrated to Canada in 2019. After Amini’s fatal beating, Adiban was determined to add her voice to the outraged masses. She says that when she heard Hajipour’s Baraye, there wasn’t a single lyric that failed to elicit a painful echo of her past. She set to work illustrating the song, producing 80% of the images during her subway rides to and from work.
As with Hajipour’s original posting of Baraye, when Adiban’s animated rendering hit Instagram, it went viral overnight.
Baraye
Today you can find multiple versions of Baraye on Youtube including Hajipour’s original post. Below, I’ve embedded my favorite, featuring Adiban’s illustrations with English subtitles. Behold the power of art and nonviolent acts of civil disobedience.
The Dike is Leaking
It’s been over two years since Amini’s death and despite Iran’s brutal and murderous crackdown on demonstrators, the Woman, Life, Freedom movement marches on. Women and girls continue to go outside without head-covering or with significant portions of their hair visible. Many women remove their headscarves while at work or while seated in a cafe. These acts might seem trivial, but they once brought on a shower of insults from average male citizens, not to mention arrest and corporal punishment.
Both male and female members of Iran’s Generation Z appear determined to live a life that more closely resembles that of their Western peers. Unlike their anti-theocracy predecessors, however, they are anchored by parents and grandparents who are increasingly irreligious and tired of government corruption.
In March of 2024, Hajipour was sentenced to serve 3 years and 8 months in jail for creating anti-government propaganda and “encouraging and provoking the public to riot to disrupt national security”. Three days before he was to enter prison, he posted a moving message to his fans on Instagram. In it, Hajipour interrogates the Iranian regime’s claim that he incited protestors to go to war, and professes his love for Iran and its people. In September, Hajipour received a pardon.
It’s impossible to know the conversations behind closed doors that led to Hajipour’s clemency. Justice is negotiable. And in this case, Hajipour’s silence is likely to be part of the deal. However, the courageous songwriter remains a mightly concentrated drop in a sea of worldwide resisters that includes bigwigs like Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, whose film The Seed of the Sacred Fig is nominated for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards, as well as multitudes of underground artists and out-in-the-open supporters who are making themselves heard online and in the streets.
It is indeed a passionate and affecting song. “For the yearning for a normal life” sums it up. A normal life is what has been denied to Iranians for forty-five years now (there was brutal repression under the Shah too, but that didn’t reach down into controlling the details of personal behavior the way the theocracy does). One gets a sense that everybody is sort of biding time and waiting for this miserable regime to go away so they can finally have normal lives.
A warning to all religionists who seek to impose their beliefs by government power: After decades of religious rule being associated with cruelty, corruption, and a grey and dismal life, the religion itself has been widely discredited. Less than half of Iran’s population even self-identifies as Muslim now.
It took a lot of courage for Hajipour to post the song, and I’m glad he ultimately received a “pardon” (the very term reminds me of when the Catholic Church “forgave” Galileo). It’s easy to see why so many of Iran’s creative people have left the country. The creative mind cannot function under the rule of weaponized nonsense.
I’d also heard that stat regarding the number of Iranians who no longer identify as Muslim. I’m glad you mentioned it. I think the video wisely addresses many issues that are unrelated to religion like: building collapses due to government payoffs to avoid sound construction practices, pollution, the Afghan refugee crisis (close to 3 million in Iran), increasing poverty…
Regarding poverty, another interesting stat I came across is that 2/3 of Iranian GNP ends up in the hands of oligarchs. It’s a shame that the intermittent rise of oligarchies seems baked in to the human condition. You wrote “everybody is sort of biding time and waiting for the miserable regime to go away”. Sounds eerily familiar.
The courage of these resisters is mind boggling. Luckily, another part of the human condition is the existence of individuals who never give up hope and/or are willing to risk their own well-being for the good of all.
Thanks for reading Infidel and for once again adding your superbly crafted two cents.
Corruption seems to fester and deepen under authoritarian rule, always. China has terrible problems with crap building practices that lead to structures falling apart and collapsing after a few years; people there call it “tofu-dreg” construction. Military equipment isn’t maintained properly. I’ve heard of things like missiles whose fuel tanks were filled with water because somebody stole the fuel and sold it. Russia has similar problems, which is why their war effort against Ukraine has been so pathetic. It’s hardly surprising that a regime as profoundly corrupt as the Iranian theocracy inflicts the same kind of disasters on its subjects.
Redistributionist economics combined with vigorous democracy seem able to keep the rise of oligarchy at bay, as in Europe and Japan. Real freedom and democracy can only exist under democratic socialism.
In case your other readers find it hard to believe that fewer than half of Iranians are still Muslim, here’s my source. Iranians tend to think of themselves as more Western than Middle Eastern (the Persian language is related to European languages, not to Arabic) and feel that Iran should be more like Greece or Italy, not like Saudi Arabia or Iraq. That forty-five years of stagnation under theocracy represents a terrible waste of potential.
I’ve heard about the poverty (malnutrition is becoming common) and pollution. It’s like the corruption. Where there is no democracy or free press, there is no accountability.
I have often been struck by the courage of people there. The 2013 uprising produced the largest street protests in the history of the world. Ultimately, people come to feel that life under a dictatorship is simply not worth living and they have nothing to lose. Anyone who loves his country, as Hajipour does, must fight against the regime.
I look forward to seeing Iran liberated someday. It will happen.
Man, do I hope you’re right about that last line Infidel. Thanks for the other examples of corrupt dictatorships, and for the link.
What a remarkably creative, searing, effective piece of art you’ve provided in that video, Carol. And I thank you for your focus on Iran. Coverage too rarely looks at the Iranian people, particularly the women–concentrating too much on the old men in power who seem to sense their days are numbered.
Art is always a powerful weapon against tyranny.
You’re welcome. Thanks for reading.