[Commlist] new book: Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music

New book /Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern 
California's Iranian Pop Music/ with Duke UP 
(https://www.dukeupress.edu/tehrangeles-dreaming).

There is plenty in the book about dancing and singing through hard times 
(in this case, the postrevolutionary and Iran-Iraq War period in Iran 
and diaspora), some of which may be relevant to the present moment.

I have made a YouTube playlist of most of the songs and videos I discuss 
in the book: 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo9XEJ6bshP61F-3R1PT3BFvDFqZEhtAd
A devoted book website will follow sometime this summer.

Duke happens to have a 50% off sale going on until May 1. If you are so 
inclined, you can buy this and so many great books (including Tyler 
Bickford's wonderful new book Tween Pop) 
<https://www.dukeupress.edu/tween-pop> for about $13 USD each. Enter the 
code SPRING50 for the discount at checkout.

Wishing you and your loved ones health and safety,

Farzaneh Hemmasi
Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology
University of Toronto Faculty of Music
http://www.farzaneh-hemmasi.com <http://www.farzaneh-hemmasi.com/>

/Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's 
Iranian Pop Music/
///
Tehrangeles, a name that combines Tehran and Los Angeles, is the home of 
an extensive Iranian expatriate culture industry. The music and popular 
culture created in Tehrangeles is broadcast by satellite television 
around the globe and has been immensely popular in Iran and throughout 
the Iranian diaspora. In TEHRANGELES DREAMING, Farzaneh Hemmasi traces 
the sources of the music's popularity, showing the ways it is 
unquestionably Iranian yet able to express ideas and affects not 
possible within the country itself. The attachment to homeland comes 
through the Iranian rhythms, but the music frequently features female 
solo singers or dancers, which are forbidden within the Iranian state. 
At the same time the music is associated with stereotypes of rich 
emigres and Southern California, and thus dismissed by others. The music 
is unabashedly pop and generally apolitical, which Hemmasi shows to be 
the source of its politics. The introduction sets up the argument and 
tells the story of the growth of the industry and the Los Angeles 
Iranian community in the context of post-revolutionary Iran. Chapter 2 
describes the origins of Tehrangeles dance pop and its use of the 
"six/eight" (/shesh-o-hasht/) groove, a traditional Iranian dance rhythm 
long-associated with intimacy. Hemmasi argues that the practices and 
attitudes around the six/eight groove establish a sense of common 
sociality among cultural insiders but are also a sometime source of 
embarrassment. Chapter 3 focuses on expatriate narratives of Iranian 
popular music history. Hemmasi provides three views on the history of 
Iranian popular music prior to the revolution from four men involved 
with the music business since the 1950s and 1960s. Chapter 4 is about 
homeland, and the desire to return to the homeland of Iran through music 
and the reinvention of culture. Cultural producers in Tehrangeles 
operate within multiple moral, legal, and transnational regimes that 
they often only partially predict or comprehend. Chapters 5 and 6 focus 
on two expatriate musical celebrities who have claimed to reach and 
represent the nation from afar: Googoosh, who is a popular female 
singer; and Dariush Eghbali, who is an activist whose music and media 
exist in the space between political and personal transformation. The 
book concludes with a chapter on the changes that have occurred in Iran 
since the Iranian Revolution and the establishment of expatriate 
industries in Southern California, affirming the dreaming space of 
music, creation, and negotiation of both expatriates and people living 
in Iran. This book will be of interest to scholars in ethnomusicology, 
transnational media studies, Middle Eastern studies, and cultural studies.

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