12.05.21 Female Voice of Iran
Yalda Yazdani
After the Revolution of 1979, the position of women in Iranian society drastically changed. This has also extended into the role of females as musicians in Iran. According to the Islamic government, it is illegal and improper for women to sing solo in public spaces. The opportunities for women to record and perform music differ from those of men, and many women, especially singers, find a creative outlet only in underground situations. Therefore the main focus of my presentation will be based on the activities and strategies of female singers for overcoming the censorships in Iranian society (as a short introduction) and in continuation of that I will explain about the documentary "Female Voice of Iran" and the female singers who have been part of this film.
Yalda Yazdani is an ethnomusicologist and curator. She was born in Iran. Currently she is working as a research fellow and also completing her PhD studies at University of Siegen in Germany. In 2020 She was selected to receive a full scholarship from House of Young Talents Academy to work on her PhD project by focusing on Women's music in post-revolutionary Iran. In 2021 she was the winner of the DAAD award (German Academic Exchange Service) which is the world's largest funding organisation for the international exchange of students and researchers. Since 2009 she has been undertaking various fieldwork research about female vocal songs and music in different regions of Iran. From 2015 she has been organising various intercultural projects, documentaries, music workshops and concerts across Iran and Europe with the aim of creating collaboration bridges between European and Middle-Eastern musicians and artists. In 2017 and 2018 she founded and curated the festivals "Female Voice of Iran'' and in 2021 the festival "Female Voice of Afghanistan'' in collaboration with Contemporary Opera Berlin. In the current times she has been collaborating with different documentary productions focusing mainly on music and the potential it offers to cross cultural borders. Her primary goal is to find ways to improve the situation of Middle-Eastern women musicians both in their home countries as well as internationally. The last cooperations have been with the documentary projects "Saz, The Key of Trust “(Arte, 2018), "The Female Voice of Iran'',(Zeitgenössische Oper Berlin, 2020) and ”Female Voice of Afghanistan'',( Zeitgenössische Oper Berlin, 2021).