ABSTRACT
This chapter examines various aspects of Arian's music, including some of the reasons for the band's popularity and the ways in which the band uses the performative and transformative, power of music to explore a range of contemporary issues. It should be noted that some forms of popular music, diaspora and pre-1979 Iranian pop, as well as Western commercial popular music broadly defined, remained, and remain, prohibited. Another important aspect of the post-1997 period has been the growth of a distinct and visible youth culture. Arian Band was born out of the specific socio-cultural environment which followed the May 1997 landslide presidential election victory of Mohammad Khatami. Regarding the involvement of women musicians, Arian was the first post-1997 band to include a woman, Sharareh Farnejad the wife of co-founder and lead singer, Ali Pahlavan. Classical singers have often drawn on the double meanings of Persian poetry, something which was particularly evident in the early 1980s.
