ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a representation of the Iranian cultural scene around the time of the 1979 revolution in a song called "Q. Q. Bang Bang", released in the US in 2003 and sung by pre-revolutionary Iran's most prominent female singer, Googoosh. The author of the lyrics of the song is a well-known Armenian Iranian woman, Zoya Zakarian. The autographed note accompanying the album conflates Googoosh's loss of voice as a singer with the plight of countless of her compatriots, young and old, who endured imprisonment, isolation, and war. The ending of the song returns us to the playfulness of the beginning and a scene of children playing together. But this time the playing takes place in the confined space of "a small, narrow room". "Q. Q. Bang Bang" works at resurrecting and acknowledging the spontaneity, solidarity, and desire to experiment that undergirded the revolution and have since been disavowed or dismissed as political naivete, and thus, ends aptly.
