REFUSING TO BE SILENCED

Iranian pop star Googoosh reveals how she reclaimed her voice after being banned from performing in the Islamic Republic and forced into exile

- MANDY TAHERI

“THE STAGE IS MY FIRST HOMELAND,” 75-YEAR-OLD IRANIAN singer Googoosh tells Newsweek from her Los Angeles home, noting that her second is Iran.

A child performer who became one of the defining voices of pre-revolution Iranian pop, with a catalog of hit songs and lasting cultural influence, Googoosh has spent the past quarter century in exile, refusing to be silenced again.

For nearly two-and-a-half decades before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the boundary-pushing artist captivated audiences in Iran with daring performances and bold style choices, writing in her memoir that despite Tehran’s “growing cosmopolitanism, it was still scandalous for a child my age to be singing in cabarets.”

By her mid-twenties, Googoosh was more than a household name—she was a national sensation, singing for the Shah, diplomats and celebrities. With major hits like “Pol,” “Do Panjereh” and “Kooh,” Googoosh became a staple of Iranian pop, her emotional songs dipping into love and longing, poetry and social feeling, and reaching millions inside and outside the country.

But her high profile, coupled with the fact she was a young woman publicly performing, made her an immediate target once the Islamic Republic took hold, like many other artists, entertainers and public figures. While much of her early music didn’t delve into politics, her widespread influence and affiliation with the Shah resulted in brief imprisonments, interrogations, confiscations and, most permanently, a ban on singing and performing in Iran.

With her voice shackled and her passport revoked, Googoosh was trapped in a rapidly transforming Iran, its sweeping religious, social and cultural shifts rendering the country almost unrecognizable from the more secular, outward-looking nation shaped over the previous two decades by modernization reforms like the White Revolution and the Family Protection Law, which expanded women’s rights.