The field of Iranian popular music studies has been flourishing in the past few years, and this volume by G.J. Breyley and Sasan Fatemi, Iranian Music and Popular Entertainment, offers insightful answers to some of the basic questions that remain, concerning the origins of Iranian music genres and their evolution. The book is organised in eight chapters that follow an introduction written by the dance and music scholar, Anthony Shay. The first five chapters are a selection of already published works by Sasan Fatemi, originally in Persian, followed by new materials and further discussions. As a whole, the book centres on the marginalisation and disappearance of traditional entertainers during the modernisation of Iranian society (accelerated during the Pahlavi dynasty from 1925 to1979), and the gradual replacement of Iranian features by Western ones in contemporary Persian popular music.

Chapters 1–3 provide historical, socio-cultural, and musical views and analyses of the motrebi genre, and ‘a form of performance known as ruhowzi’ (p. 1). Their practitioners were, respectively, the motreb musicians and moqalled comic actors; they performed at weddings and other festive events. The history of the motreb can be traced back to the Safavid era (1501–1736), but they clearly emerged as a category of musicians from the early 1900s when, as public entertainers of celebratory events, they became distinct from ‘serious’ musicians (Fatemi Reference Fatemi2001). Their music belongs to the Iranian classical music system, but only to a limited extent in terms of instruments, genres, modes and rhythms. The motrebi genre has rarely been addressed in scholarship, and Fatemi is the foremost specialist (e.g. Fatemi Reference Fatemi2001).

The book shows that the marginalised status of the motreb resulted from the social and spatial polarisation of Iranian society, especially in Tehran city, at the beginning of the 20th century, between the south and the north. The two halves, respectively, belonged to ‘traditional’, disadvantaged, and opulent, ‘modern’ classes. The motreb, unlike in the past when they had ‘enlivened the celebrations of all social classes, [were] limited to the south’ (p. 1). In such polarised society ‘that wishes to be “modern” and “progressive”’ (p. 2), the motreb became increasingly marginalised. Today in ‘the eyes of many Tehran residents, the motreb is an illiterate […] musician [who] lacks respectability, […] speaks with the “vulgar” accent, [and a] respectable woman never openly speaks to’ him (p. 2). This status was partly reinforced by Persian classical musicians who consider motrebs as light, indecent, figures, and motrebi music as ‘Persian classical music's despised other’ (p. x). ‘Even those who belong to the domain of variety entertainment and popular music tend to hold motreb in contempt’ (p. 5). In fact, neither the fact that they shared their musical system with Iranian classical music nor even ‘the fact that [the motrebs] were invited to the royal court’ could changed their lower status (p. 6). However, it should be considered that the motreb's significant role at festive events puts them in the same continuum as contemporary popular musicians.

Perhaps the two most fascinating chapters are the book's fourth and fifth, in which relatively detailed discussions on folk and classical musical genres are linked to the literature of Popular Music Studies. Breyley and Fatemi argue that the evolution of the motrebi folk genre and the tasnif (the light, vocal, metric genre of Iranian classical music) gave birth to, respectively, the ‘kâfe'i’ music (the motrebi-influence popular music genre) (p. 76), and modal songs or ‘tarânehâ-ye dastgâhi’ (p. 103). Mass media, however, have been the most crucial determining factor for the development of the kâfe'i music and tarâneh-ye dastgâhi. For the former, besides the ‘kâfe’ (the lower-class citizens’ cafés of Tehran that emerged in the mid-1940s), cinema, particularly from the 1960s, ‘established a link between motrebi and official milieux’ and ‘kâfe'i music was therefore openly presented’ (p. 76) in this medium. For the latter, radio, whose first station was inaugurated in 1940 (p. 103), was the most important medium. Together, these chapters valuably contribute to scholarship since Iranian music scholars, up to this point, have not usually considered the interactions between Iranian classical, folk and popular musical cultures. The authors’ argument also gives rise to further debates when they recognise the Golhâ programme – the radio programmes broadcast on Iranian National Radio for 23 years from 1956 through 1979 – as ‘the place par excellence of [confusion of] classical and popular musical categories’ (p. 105). This view differs from some that of other scholars, such as Lewisohn, who assumes the Golhâ programme as ‘an unrivalled encyclopaedia of classical Persian music and poetry’ (2008, p. 79, italics are mine).

In Chapters 6–8, Breyley and Fatemi study Westernised Iranian popular music and its stars from the late 1960s to 2014, including pre-revolutionary, post-revolutionary and losanjelesi pop genres and singers. The authors discuss the floating notions of popularity and prestige among pop singers before and after the revolution of 1979. While Googoosh, the most Westernised star of the 1960s, became the most respectable, all music that was ‘designated ‘Western’ became ‘immoral’ soon after the revolution’ (p. 136). The new Islamic governments’ criteria required ‘decency’, as a result of which many songs and singers became unauthorised, while some former ‘religious’ vocalists ascended and became the legitimate pop singers of the new regime (p. 174). The authors also examined losanjelesi music, named after Los Angeles where many Iranian musicians migrated after the revolution, and the reverse flow of travel of their songs which, in the late 1980s and 1990s, moved from the US back to Iran (see Hemmasi Reference Hemmasi2020). The authors suggest that losanjelesi songs’ dominance, ‘formulaic simplicity’ and ‘predictable lyrics’ made some ‘listeners tired’ (p. 154) and gave birth to an emergent musical genre that they call ‘made in Iran, new popular music’ (p. 157). However, losanjelesi music, as the authors briefly mention (p. 246), also became a model for some other Iranian popular music genres, such as Persian rap that is entirely ignored here: a Western-influenced genre which was partly developed by Los Angeles-based Iranian singer Sandy (see Johnston Reference Johnston2008).

This book, for the most part, is a useful and unique work without counterparts in the Anglophone literature on the field. The authors’ contribution, however, shows that there is still room for discussion on several aspects of Iranian popular music. This work facilitates further in-depth scholarly works on understudied aspects of the genre.