The scene opens with the camera zooming in on a small raised stage where a group of muṭribs (minstrel performers) are enacting a rūḥawzī piece. At stage left, a young man is singing a love song that describes the physical features of his beloved, Chihilgis. He is accompanied by an ensemble that plays rhythmic music (in 6/8 meter) on traditional Iranian instruments—the tunbak, the tār, and the kamānchih.Footnote ¹ Standing next to the singer is Chihilgis, performed by a crossed-dressed performer (zanpūsh) who sports a long wig and moves flirtatiously to the song, making coquettish gestures with the eyes, lips, and shoulders. Chihilgis then joins the dance center stage with the two other main characters: the protagonist, enacted by the black-faced performer Mubarak, who has a tambourine (dāyirih) in hand; and Haji, Chihilgis’ old father, who sports a white cotton beard. With variations based on the characters, the dance consists of typical muṭribī moves, including exaggerated wrist and hip rotations, facial gestures such as blinking, and sliding head movements. This musical segment is followed by a witty, humorous dialogue between Mubarak and Haji with sexual undertones.

The events unfolding onstage appear as a usual muṭribī act until the play is abruptly halted and the camera moves to an angered audience consisting mostly of bearded men who begin shouting “this is ‘vice’ [fisq va fujūr]! This is ‘dancing’ [raqqāsī]! This is ‘ibtiẓāl’ [degeneration]!” It is then that the viewer of the recent home video series Dandun Tala (The Golden Tooth) realizes that the story has fast-forwarded about a decade, from the mid-1970s to the 1980s. The climax scene depicts a postrevolutionary situation in Iran, where a “conservative” crowd, signified by their beards, temper, and terminology, protests a rūḥawzi performance by a muṭribī group. Created by the renowned director Davud Mirbaqiri and disseminated legally in Iran, the popular video series conveys the underlying theme of the declining situation of muṭribī groups in Iran. The scene just described was a reference to attacks against these groups, especially in the first decade of the revolution, when, along with several other performance genres associated with the Pahlavi government (1926–79) (including commercial cinema and popular music), the muṭribs were convicted for a number of vices, including “degeneration.”

Although the climax scene in the video series depicts a postrevolutionary situation, neither the term “degenerate” nor such accusations against the muṭribs were new to the Iranian context. As I detail in my forthcoming book, Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage (New York: Routledge, forthcoming), while the concept ibtiẓāl was adopted by the Islamic Republic government's discourse and policies on committed arts that encouraged revolutionary and Islamic themes, the term “degenerate” and its binary opposite mutiʿahhid (committed or engagé) had longer histories in the context of Iranian arts.Footnote ² With a leftist genealogy, the binary was part of the legacy of the Marxist-inspired discourse on committed (performing) arts during the 1930s and 1940s. Arguably, understanding this politically motivated binary, and that its production (and its constant reconfiguration later) has been a direct consequence of the intersection of politics and arts in the historical context of the 20th century, requires using the lens of body and sensory studies.

For the remainder of the article, I focus on the genealogy of the binary notions mutiʿahhid/mubtaẓal, while deducing their meanings and sensory and affective appeals from their dialogic relations. In particular, I try to apprehend the sounds of “degeneration” by means of understanding how the “committed” sounded and what effects it instigated in the audience, and vice versa. As indicated in the first passage, the term “degenerate,” as a counter-aesthetics criterion, transcends a singular sense and artistic discipline (such as music, dance, or theater). Furthermore, when applied to the performing body, it connotes a range of aural and corporeal qualities, gender performativity, and affects. In contrast, being result-oriented, the “committed” is most often recognized by its subject/content, purpose, and affect (e.g., instigating the audience to alleviate society) rather than its form. In addition, lacking the qualities, sensory appeals, and signifiers ascribed to the “degenerate” seems to qualify a product as “committed.”

A multisensory analytical approach is relevant here because the muṭribs, the main group identified with the term, not only were multidisciplinary performers, but they also carried these associations with themselves to a spectrum of Pahlavi-era urban popular cultural forms and sites. The latter included cafés and cabarets where they were accompanied by female cabaret dancers, the popular theater scene of Lalehzar street after 1950, the commercial cinema of film-i farsi, and the popular music scene. This has resulted in the further complicating of the term and the incorporation of new sounds, gestures, and movements into the “repertoire” of ibtiẓāl. Furthermore, the Marxist-inspired rhetoric on the arts itself transcended a singular form (theater, music, painting, and poetry) and sense—it was geared toward the conceptualization of arts (in general) for the “new Iran” (īran-i nuvīn).

The emergence of this binary and the othering of the muṭribs become evident in three articles written by the literary figure Buzurg ʿAlavi (under his penname Firaydun Nakhuda) and published in the important periodical Dunya between 1933 and 1935. Seeking to apply the Marxist theory of historical and dialectical materialism to the Iranian context, ʿAlavi linked the evolution of arts to the progress of materialistic and economic life of the society, concluding that the arts’ impact on society depended on their historical relevance and contemporaneity. This claim in itself rejected the muṭribs, who were the main group of vernacular performers hired to perform music, dance, and act in various functions in the past. ʿAlavi further affirmed his theory with the example of musical instruments and the ineffectiveness of the indigenous dāyirih and tunbak (prevalent in muṭribī music) in comparison to the stronger, effective, and progressive instruments such as piano and organ prevalent in the music of other countries.Footnote ³ In his subsequent article, ʿAlavi elaborated on the ways in which new arts in Iran, including European-influenced theater and music (specifically the work of Ghulam Huasyn Minbashian, who composed Iranian tunes for European instruments) had the potential to improve popular tastes, which would in turn force artists to produce more profound art.Footnote ⁴ In a follow-up article entitled “Art in the New Iran,” ʿAlavi directly addressed the notion of “committed art” as art with a “purpose” (manzūr) and “ideology”(marām). With emphasis on the affective impact of art, he divided artists into those who comfort and entertain their audience and instill in them the feelings of toleration and submission, and those who uncover the sources of people's miseries and empower their audiences to eliminate the causes of their suffering.Footnote ⁵ The muṭribs and their performance genres were deemed unsuitable for the title “art” in rhetoric of committed arts, and inherently fell into the category of those who entertained and comforted the audience.

With the establishment of the Tudeh Party in 1941 and its push for the arts and culture, including music and theater, as important ideological media, theories of “committed arts” came to be practiced and assessed.Footnote ⁶ The Tudeh Party's musical activities were geared toward advocacy, especially with members’ ritualistic recitation of the Tudeh march in their gatherings. A call for a composer for a new anthem in the Tudeh newspaper described how committed art was expected to sound: “the anthem of this party should manifest the austerities, desires, excitements, and hopes of those who allure for freedom of Iran.”Footnote ⁷ The affective and sensory implications of the new anthem made afterwards can be inferred from the review of a symphonic concert held at their club. The new score was described as embodying “a spirit of resistance and realism,” and “filling the hearts with ‘gratification’ [imtinān]” and qualities that could facilitate a “decisive victory over ‘social lethargy’ [khamūd-i ijtimaʿī] and ‘backwardness’ [irtijāʿ].”Footnote ⁸ In another review, the same author applauded the orchestra for its use of violin, cello, clarinet, and flute instead of the tār, tunbak, and kamānchih, which were seen to cultivate backwardness. This attitude was based on the assumption that the sound of these instruments did not have the capacity to energize the audience and was more suited for accompanying opium smoking.Footnote ⁹

An example of Tudeh's committed theater was the 1943 play Ittihad-i Karigar va Rushanfikr (The Union of the Worker and the Intellectual), which was performed at the Tudeh's club for an audience of workers and intellectuals. A reviewer praised the piece for its humble setting, which according to him was overshadowed by the performance and content, and an audience whose attendance was not for entertainment. The sound of this committed play can be deduced from this review, which details some of the ideologically oriented dialogues between the actors (including a smart dissenting worker and a greedy contractor) and their (sonic) audience effect—“a storm of screaming and clapping that shook the windows and the walls of the club.”Footnote ¹⁰

The play was directed by the pioneering theatrical figure ʿAbd al-Husayn Nushin (1906–71), who was also involved with the party as a member of its central committee. His dual role as an artist and politician at the height of the party's massive publicity made him the defining figure of the new thriving status of theater as a committed art. He was seen as the one who single-handedly saved Iranian theater from the degenerate performances of the muṭribs of the past. This view is echoed in a review of his work by another key Tudeh figure, Ihsan Tabari, who admired Nushin for “establishing the true meaning of theater in our country, saving it from degeneration, tackiness, muqallidī, and clowning.”Footnote ¹¹ This statement put Nushin head to head with the muṭribs and performance genres associated with them, including: taqlīd (imitation), dalqak-bāzī (clowning), and rūḥawzī. To provide a point of comparison between the sounds of the mentioned committed play by Nushin with those of the muṭribs’ “degenerate” acts, I turn to Mustafa Uskui, another Tudeh-affiliated actor and director. In his historical narrative of Iranian theater, he brands muṭribs as agents of the Pahlavi state who degraded the art of theater, and describes the sounds and movements of their performance as featuring vulgar and obscene conversations as well as sexually imbued gestures and jokes, which evoke loud laughter from the audience.Footnote ¹²

Many ideas initiated and disseminated by the Tudeh Party remained within Iranian art discourse after the ban and decline of the Tudeh party in the late 1940s. Especially in the theatrical realm, Nushin's mythic image as artist and political activist came to represent the golden age of Iranian theater (discursively located on Lalihzar Street), and his departure to the Soviet Union in 1951 marked theater's decline. Concurrently, due to financial shortcomings of the private sector theater scene of Lalihzar street, the muṭribs and their dancing colleagues were recruited to the theatrical stage to bring new “popular” audiences (as opposed to the elite and politically conscious audiences of the past). Most politically motivated narratives of Iranian theater interpreted the coinciding of Nushin's departure with the arrival of muṭribs and dancers as the return of ibtiẓāl. This is best summarized in the Marxist theater director Saʿid Sultanpur's critique of Pahlavi-era theater (and manifesto of political art), A Way of Art, a Type of Thinking, in which he wrote:

Sultanpur not only ascribed “degeneration” to postcoup theater, but also blamed the state for its active role in sponsoring “degeneration.” In his narrative, this latter notion was signified by dance, music, fun, and recreation—performative elements that killed the spirit of resistance—extending the earlier leftist discourse that had rejected the muṭribs for their “undesirable” effects on the audience.

Coinciding with the growth of urban sites of leisure in the 1950s, the term “degeneration” found new connotations. The “enticing image” of the cabaret dancer in the Pahlavi entertainment industry, who came to embody overt sexuality, added another layer of undesirable qualities to the “degenerate acts”: her exaggerated hip gyrations (qir) and shimmies in her scant attire were not only accompanied by muṭribs’ music but also invited male audience members’ sexual propositions. When applied to cinema, it connoted titillating scenes, (cabaret style) dance, and music segments, as well as romantic melodramas. The various styles of Persian pop music developed in the Pahlavi era with muṭribī genealogies in style, rhythm (particularly the 6/8 meter), and affect (stimulating the listener to qir, or to gyrate the hips, neck, and wrists), as well as new influences from Turkish, Indian, and Arabic music, further complicated the musical aspects of ibtiẓāl.Footnote ¹⁴

As is evident from Sultanpur's quote, “degeneration” had become a signifier of the revolutionary discourse's critique of Pahlavi social and cultural policies. With the establishment of the Islamic Republic, it then entered state discourse on “committed” arts and culture. Today, the term is used not only by the state, but also by various art and social critics to dismiss various forms of arts and art-related matters, including the predominance of fast rhythm pop music in post-Ahamadinejad Iran, television shows with comedic elements, and the recent wave of privately funded theater, all of which are blamed for their entertaining elements.Footnote ¹⁵ All of these new connotations are (inhibited) reiterations of ideas earlier disseminated with specific ideological motives. The failure to question the genealogies of such prevalent ideologically driven aesthetics criteria causes not only the dismissal of an important era and area of urban cultural history, but a historiographical gap in the corporeal and performative aspects of Iranian political history. Perhaps it is time to think about the ways in which (political) narratives can be enriched by aural, performative, and corporeal data obtained from realms outside pure politics.