The twentieth century

The twentieth century transformed music in Iran more than any period before it. A tradition that had lived at court, in private gatherings and in oral teaching met the gramophone, the conservatory, the radio and the cassette. The first recordings of Persian musicians were made in the early 1900s by European gramophone companies, preserving masters of the Qajar court. Within a generation, music had moved from the private room to a national public.

Vaziri and notation

Ali-Naqi Vaziri (1886–1979), a colonel who studied music in Paris and Berlin, returned to Iran in the early 1920s and founded a school of music in Tehran in 1923. He devised a system for writing Persian music in Western staff notation, introducing two signs, koron and sori, to mark the intervals between the European semitones. He wrote method books, composed, and argued for teaching music in a modern, systematic way. His work was influential and debated: supporters credit him with opening Persian music to new forms, while others felt that notation and Western harmony risked weakening the oral and improvised tradition.

The Golha programmes

Radio Tehran began broadcasting in 1940. From 1956 to 1979 its Golha, ‘Flowers’, programmes, created by Davud Pirnia, brought classical music and poetry together for a national audience. The programmes, with series such as Golha-ye Javidan, Golha-ye Rangarang, Barg-e Sabz and Yek Shakh-e Gol, paired recitations of classical poetry with avaz and instrumental music by leading musicians. Hundreds of programmes survive, and they are now regarded as one of the great archives of twentieth-century Persian music.

Pop, revolution and diaspora

From the 1950s, popular music developed rapidly, blending Persian melody with Western instruments and styles. By the 1970s Tehran had a thriving pop industry of singers, composers and lyricists whose songs filled cafés, cinemas and television. After the 1979 revolution, the new authorities restricted much of this music: broadcasting was largely confined to revolutionary songs and some classical music, and many pop performers left the country. Music and performance came under the licensing of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. Restrictions were later eased in stages, and licensed pop returned in the late 1990s. Women’s solo singing in public before mixed audiences remains restricted, though women may perform for all-female audiences or in choirs, as documented by Human Rights Watch, Freemuse and scholarly studies such as those of Laudan Nooshin; classical music continued to be taught and performed widely, and younger musicians built underground and online scenes.

Many musicians who left settled in Los Angeles, where a Persian-language music industry grew up from the 1980s, nicknamed ‘Tehrangeles’ by some. Its recordings, satellite television and concerts reached listeners in Iran and around the world. In Afghanistan, Kabul radio and singers such as Ahmad Zahir (1946–1979) created a modern popular music in the 1960s and 1970s; under Taliban rule in 1996–2001, and again since 2021, public music has been banned or severely restricted, as reported by the United Nations and Human Rights Watch. In Tajikistan, Persian-language song developed through Soviet radio and the national conservatory, with a pop scene of its own.