'For dancing in the streets' - solidarity with revolt in Iran

The 'Women, Life, Freedom' revolt in Iran is an inspiration. I can only express my solidarity for those who have taken to the streets following the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini at the hands of the Guidance Patrol morality police, after she was detained because of how she was dressed (specifically for not 'correctly' covering her head).

Mahsa Amimi

So many others have been killed since, here's just some of those named so far:

Let us never forget them, or Asra Panahi, a 16 year old killed after refusing to sing an anthem in support of the regime

In a state which polices music and dancing so heavily it is no surprise that these are being forcibly expressed in the protest movement, most notably in Shervin Hajipour’s “For…” which makes a song out of tweets posted by people about what they are fighting for: ''For dancing in the streets,  For the fear we feel when kissing a loved one, For my sister, your sister, our sisters...For women, life, freedom

 

 Interesting piece here by Omid Hessamian, 'Shervin Hajipour’s “For…” and the History of Iranian Protest Songs'

Echoes too of the 'dancing is not a crime' movement following the 2018 arrest and jailing of Maedeh Hojabri for instagram posts of her dancing. This piece, 'Dancing Tehran: Iran's Women Make A Stand' features women dancing in defiance and solidariy intercut with videos made by Maedeh Hojabri.

 

Update December 2022:

Mahsa Amimi remembered in London (Shoreditch)

Raid on 'Homosexuals and Satanists' in Iran

The Guardian reported earlier this month (10 October):

'Iran's revolutionary guards have announced the arrest of "a network of homosexuals and satanists" in the western city of Kermanshah, close to the country's border with Iraq, prompting fresh alarm over the treatment of gay people in the Islamic republic. The news website of the revolutionary guards in Kermanshah province, home to the country's Kurd ethnic minority, reported on Thursday that their elite forces had dismantled what it claimed to be a network of homosexuals and devil-worshippers.

A number of foreign nationals, including Iraqis, were also among those detained, the report said, adding that eight of the group were married to each other. The group were picked up from one of the city's ceremony halls, which they had rented for a birthday party. The guards' webiste said they were dancing as the raid ensued. The revolutionary guards claimed the group had been under surveillance for some time but did not specify how many people were arrested'.

The Iranian Lesbian & Transgender Network has since reported (16 October) that  'Dozens of people recently arrested in Kermanshah, Iran have all been reportedly released on bail'. In a country with various paramilitary/police agencies the Network suggests that it is significant that the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) themselves carried out the raid, the 'first time the IRGC has openly declared responsibility for confronting a community described as belonging to “homosexuals” and “satanists”. In the past, police and Basij forces were reportedly the forces responsible for raiding house parties and assaulting, harassing, and arresting guests for same-sex relations or 'Actions against chastity'.

The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran has published more detail, drawing on an eye witness account:

“There were 75 guests in the party. A banquette hall had been rented therefore the owner had given permission to an all-men party to take place there...“about 60 to 70 IRGC and Basij forces entered the hall, around 12:15 am., after dinner was served. The agents had Kalashnikovs, pepper sprays, cables and Tasers. They started beating everyone, using swear words:’You’re not men, you’re a bunch of women. You’ve gathered here to rape each other. The government will never accept you. Faggot asses! (Korreh-khar’ha’ye Hamjensbaz)”

"The men were beaten harshly. Their cellphones and cameras were confiscated. When a young man refused to give up his cellphone, the agents attacked him and beat him mercilessly. A total of 17 Guests who wore colorful clothes or looked like Ahl-e-Haq [members of this group have distinct-looking mustaches] were taken to the local police station. The rest of the guests were kept in the hall, and they were forced to eat the cake and they were insulted while they were forced to eat the cake. After that, the remaining guests were forced to sign a pledge (they weren’t allowed to read the content), and were released.”

“Seventeen of the men who were singled out based on their appearances and religious beliefs were transferred to a police station and then shortly thereafter were taken to an unknown detention center. They were blindfolded at all times. They were stripped down to their briefs/underwear. They were photographed naked from several angles. Then they were given prison grey-suites, a uniform for those who’re going to be hanged. The detainees’ clothes and other belongings were placed in bags plastic bags. They were interrogated repeatedly. At the detention center, the men were taken to a very small space, a little larger than a phone booth, blindfolded, and they were asked to pull up their blindfold a little. The place was ‘very, very dark.’ They were repeatedly beaten and accused of being homosexuals and Satan-worshippers'.

Accounts in the Western press have mainly focused on the obvious anti-gay aspects of this raid, but it is also linked to the attacks on other cultural and religious minorities in this Kurdish area of Iran. Suspected 'Ahl-e-Haq' ('People of Truth') were seemingly singled out during the raid, followers of the Yarsan religion. This weekend 80 people protesting against the persecution of this faith were arrested in Tehran.

Police and parties, 1994-95

A while ago I posted chronologies of police and parties from 1996 and 1997. Here's some more from 1994 and 1995, all from England unless otherwise stated.

1994

January

( N.Ireland): A member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary is acquitted of the murder of 19 year-old Kevin McGovern in 1991, and will now return to police duty. McGovern was shot in the back on his way to a disco in Cookstown. The policeman claimed he thought the youth was armed (he wasn't). A few weeks earlier (on December 23) two British soldiers were found not guilty of the murder of Fergal Carraher, an unarmed man who was shot dead at an army checkpoint in Cullhana in 1990.

March

(N.Ireland): 16 people are arrested and many injured as RUC police with riot gear and dogs attack young people leaving a dance in Omagh. As the dance finished, police sealed off surrounding streets. People are beaten about the head with three foot long batons and plastic bullets fired.

April

Richard O’Brien, a 37 year old father of seven is killed by police from Walworth police station in south London. He had been to a dance at an Irish centre after a christening; outside he got into an argument with cops who held him down on the ground for 5 minutes after handcuffing him. In 1995 an inquest jury found that he had been unlawfully killed.

November

100 police raid Riverside club in Newcastle, making 33 arrests

December

Police raid on Final Frontier, techno night at Club UK, Wandsworth, South London

1995

May

Police with riot shields raid a techno free party at the ArtLab, Preston and impound the sound system, decks, records and other equipment. 21 arrests [Mixmag July 1995]

(Scotland): Drug squad cops harrass people at Ingnition II, a commercial rave in Aberdeen. 75 people were searched (some of them up to four times in a half hour period), and some arrested.

3000 people attend an all-weekend free party organised by United Systems at a disused air force base near Woodbridge, Suffolk featuring Virus, Vox Populi, Jiba, Oops and Chiba City sound systems. Police shut down the party on Monday afternoon, arresting four people and confiscating equipment (all returned within two weeks).

Police close down free party put on by Transient and Babel sound systems near Bangor (Wales).

Heavy police presence at Phenomenon One at the Hacienda, Manchester. Although there was no trouble, the police complained that there were too many people smoking grass and drinking after 2 am, and the management cancelled future jungle nights.

June

Police raid Home in Manchester, and call for it to be closed down permanently. It doesn’t reopen until December.

July

The weekend of July 7th 1995 saw the first major police operation using the ‘anti-rave’ sections of the Criminal Justice Act. Cops across the country coordinated their efforts and successfully managed to prevent the planned 7/7 “mother” of all free festivals. To stop people dancing in a field, police:

- raided the houses of people believed to be involved in organising the party and charged eight people with “conspiracy to cause a public nuisance”;
- took over the party info phonelines and questioned callers;
- used helicopters and set up roadblocks to stop people getting to planned festival sites at Corby (Northants), Sleaford (Lincs.), and Smeatharpe (Devon) where ten people were arrested.
- seized the sound system belonging to Black Moon (a free party collective based at Buxton, Derbyshire), charging three people under Section 63 of the CJA, the first time it has been used.
- used Section 60 of the CJA to set up five mile exclusion zones around festival sites.

Thousands of people took to the roads in search of the festival, and despite the efforts of the police several smaller parties did happen, including at Grafham (where over 1000 people partied) and at Steart Beach near Hinckley Point in Dorset where 150 vehicles managed to gather.

Bottles and bricks thrown at police by people being turned away from a warehouse near Huddersfield, Yorkshire where a party was to be held. 3 people are arrested after shop and police car windows are smashed.

70 police raid Progress house night in Derby. Everybody in the club (punters, staff and security) searched and made to leave, and the club was closed down

On July 23rd 1995 Reclaim the Streets closed down one of London’s busiest roads and held a big free party. Publicity for ‘Rave against the machine’ had been circulating for weeks with only the venue a secret. While police wondered where the action would be hundreds of people poured out of Angel tube station and blocked Islington high street, transforming it quickly into a car free zone. Banners calling for an end to the “tyranny of the motor car” and “support the railworkers” (on strike) were hung across the road, and sound systems, including one fitted onto an armoured car, sprang into action. Chill out spaces were created with bits of carpet on the road and a few comfy armchairs, as well as a giant sandpit for children. A couple of thousand people partied from noon to about seven o’clock while the police watched on unamused. After the music finished and most people had gone home, riot cops took out their frustration on those left behind, baton charging them down to Kings Cross, and making 38 arrests

(Scotland): “The friendly ‘boys on blue’ or rather ‘psycho cops in combat gear’ launched a massive, over-the-top drugs raid on the Kathouse club in Lockerbie. About 50 of them burst in, handcuffed everyone and carted them off to Lockerbie and Dumfries police station. Everyone was interrogated, finger prints were taken and they had to mark on a plan of the Kathouse where they had been sitting and they were all strip searched. The police treated everyone like shit. The Kathouse holds about 150 people max. It’s in a small town and the club itself is not very big. .. The music ranged from house to hardcore, the atmosphere was electric, there was never any violence... 6 people out of 77 were charged with possession of drugs” [M8, October 1995.]

August

(Canada): In Shuswap territory, a sacred sundance and burial site was been occupied by Native Americans. At the end of August 1995, heavily armed Royal Canadian Mounted Police cut off all communications to the Shuswap camp, and surround the area. One Canadian cop refered to the sundancers as “dancing prairie niggers”. [Earth First Action Update, September 1995]

(Argentina): Police arrest 130 gay men and transvestites after storming the gay pub Gas Oil in Buenos Aires on suspicion of ‘corruption’. In Mar del Plata, 60 lesbians and gay men were stripped searched and arrested in the Petroleo disco [Pink Paper, 1 September 1995]

September

(Iran): “A bride has been sentenced to 85 lashes in Mashhad, Iran, for dancing with men at her wedding. The court sentenced 127 wedding guests to floggings or fines and jailed one man.” [Guardian, 5 September 1995]

(Ireland): Tribal Gathering II, due to take place in Cavan on September 30th, is cancelled after the local police object. A local cop says that they did not have the resources to stop “the undesirable elements that shows of this nature attract”. Cavan County Council had initially approved the event, but after the intervention of the Garda they moved the goalposts and said that the organisers (Universe and The Mean Fiddler) would need planning permission, impossible in the time remaining.

Over 114 arrests (mainly for drugs) at Dreamscape, a commercial rave at Brafield Aeordorome, Northampton.

35 people arrested in police raid on party at Clyro near Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border.

October

150 police raid Club UK in south London. Operation Blade involved dogs, horses, and the Territorial Support Group. 800 clubbers were turned out on to the streets, and many searched. 10 people were arrested

(Wales): Police raid 37 pubs and clubs in mid-Wales, making 50 arrests after seizing various drugs

11 people are nicked in a a drugs raid on Happy Jax in south-east London.

On Saturday October 21st 1995, 600 people block Deansgate, one of Manchester’s busiest shopping streets for a Reclaim the Streets protest. People dance and party until 5:00 pm, when the police threaten to arrest the Desert Storm Sound System (veterans of Hyde Park and Bosnia). The crowd move to Albert Square (outside the Town Hall) where they carry on till the morning.

November

(Scotland): 30 police raid Slam at the Arches in Glasgow.

150 police wait outside Dance Paradise event in Great Yarmouth searching people and making 86 arrests ; the rave was spread over three venues and the police stopped and searched people as they moved between them. The police invited BBC and ITV crews to film the operation [Mixmag, January 1996]

Manager of the Mineshaft gay club in Manchester convicted under the Disorderly Houses Act 1751 for supposedly allowing men to have sex with men in a back-room at the club (raided by police in April 1994 with 13 arrests).

The owner of Peckham gay bar Attitude fined under an 1832 Act for “allowing disorderly behaviour”. Undercover cops in leather visited the club earlier this year, as did two Southwark Council Licensing officers. The latter attended an underwear party and stripped down in the spirit of things before reporting that they had seen men having oral sex and four men dancing, when the bar had no dancing licence [Gay Gazette 8 November 1995]

The House of Lords refuses to repeal the Sunday Observance Act of 1780 which forbids pubs and clubs from charging for dances on the Sabbath. While horse racing and shopping have been allowed, the Lords ruled Sunday dances too sensitive and needing more public consultation. The Metropolitan Police have written to pubs warning them that they could be fined for breaking these rules. Since New Years Eve falls on a Sunday some events (such as a Sign of the Times party at the ICA) have already been cancelled. The law also requires special licences to extend music, dancing and drinking hours on a Sunday [Time Out, November 1995, Gay Gazette, 8 Nov. 1995]

December

Police raid the Dolphin gay pub in Wakefield at 2:30 am on Boxing Day and arrest 15 people because “Licensing laws were being broken”

Seven people become the first to be found guilty under the “rave” sections of the Criminal Justice Act, after being arrested at a party on the site of an anti-roads protest in Whitstable, Kent

(Australia) 20,000 people from all over the world turn up for the Bondi beach party in Sydney on Christmas Day. Police threaten to ban next year’s party, or at least make it alcohol-free after rioting at the end. On New Year’s Eve, there is more trouble: 12 people were arrested and rocks and bottles were thrown at cops.

BP: your party's over

Is there a more obscene media spectacle at the moment than British newspapers like the Daily Express whipping up people to rally round BP (see for instance this front cover from June 11th)?. On the one hand, Obama is criticised for calling them British Petroleum when they have rebranded themselves as plain old multinational BP (British Polluters?); on the other we are told that the British Government should do more to defend them because of their importance to the British economy. It may be true that a collapse in BP's share price will hit pension funds, but that just highlights the absurdity of older people's incomes being at the mercy of the market lottery. Of course other oil companies are just as bad, and indeed governments all over the world, including Obama's, are deeply involved in their activities.

But what about BP? Never mind the unfolding environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, 11 workers died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion on April 20th - something that every report on this should be mentioning, but which seems to frequently be 'forgotten'. Likewise 16 workers died in April 2009 when the helicopter carrying them from BP's Miller field crashed into the North Sea. And 15 people died in the infamous March 2005 BP Texas City refinery catastrophe.

Shortly before the Gulf of Mexico explosion, there was a protest against another BP operation - the strip mining of a huge area of the Candadian wilderness in Alberta to extract oil. The International Day of Action on the Canadian Tar Sands on 10th April was marked in London with a 'Party at the Pumps' at Shepherds Bush Green BP Petrol Station. Using a tactic developed in the 1990s Reclaim the Streets parties to outwit the police, people gathered at Oxford Circus tube station, most of them unaware of the location of the protest. They followed a few people with flags on to a train, who signalled with a whistle blast at Shepherds Bush station that it was time to get off. Meanwhile an advance party had occupied the petrol station forecourt.

More than a hundred of people took part in the four hour long 'Party at the Pumps', dancing to live music from the Rhythms of Resistance samba band, the Green Kite Midnight ceilidh band and the Bicycology sound system

photos © Peter Marshall 2010; loads more at his My London Diary site

Meanwhile, in Casanare, Colombia, workers have been occupying a BP plant in a wages dispute. According to the Colombia Solidarity Campaign (6 June 2010):

'There has been an upsurge in workers and community protests against BP in Casanare since the beginning of 2010. Workers at the Tauramena Central Processing Facility (CPF) starting 22 January went in strike supported by USO, the National Oil Workers Union of Colombia. On 15 February riot police brutally attacked the picket line, sending three workers to hospital. Demonstrations and popular assemblies in support of the stoppage took place in Tauramena and surrounding villages from February onwards. The USO union and many different community sectors came together to form the Movement for the Dignity of Casanare. The strike ended after 30 days when BP promised talks...

On 21 May workers involved in construction operations in the Tauramena installation entered into occupation demanding: a wage increase; the establishment a wage scale; due process in disciplinary decisions; and labour guarantees for the workers. On 2 June army forces entered the plant and at time of writing are harassing the workers, who stay overnight chaining themselves to plant equipment so that they cannot be dislodged'.

In the past activists opposing BP in Colombia, whether on environmental or workplace issues, have been killed by right wing death squads.

BP started out as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) in 1909, after oil was discovered in Iran. It was renamed the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) in 1935 with the British Government taking a controlling interest, and the British Petroleum Company in 1954. It notoriously played a role in the 1953 military coup which overthrew the Mohammed Mossadegh as Prime Minister after his government voted to nationalise AIOC. As Stephen Kinzer, author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, summarised in a recent interview : 'the oil that fueled England all during the 1920s and '30s and ’40s all came from Iran.... Every factory in England, every car, every truck, every taxi was running on oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which was projecting British power all over the world, was fueled a hundred percent by oil from Iran'.

Lustful pleasure-seeking in Iran

Iranian police detained 80 young men and women for "lustful pleasure-seeking" activities at an illegal concert, Tehran's chief prosecutor has been quoted. The socially conservative Islamic republic launched a crackdown two years ago on "indecent western-inspired movements", such as rappers and Satanists, as part of a widening clampdown on conduct the authorities deem immoral.

The public prosecutor, Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi, said moral security police received a tip-off that a group of people were secretly selling tickets to a live music performance. "Police entered the venue where this illegal concert was being held ... 80 boys and girls in inappropriate outfits and under abnormal conditions were arrested," he told the Iranian Students' News Agency.

He said their cases were sent to a Tehran court where the youths were charged with taking part in "lustful pleasure-seeking" activities. Alcohol had been seized, he said. Under Iran's Islamic law unrelated men and women are banned from touching or dancing with members of the opposite sex. Alcohol and narcotics are illegal in Iran.

(Source: Reuters/Guardian, 7 May 2010)

Suntanned women to be arrested under Islamic dress code (Telegraph, 27 April 2010)

Brig Hossien Sajedinia, Tehran's police chief, said a national crackdown on opposition sympathisers would be extended to women who have been deemed to be violating the spirit of Islamic laws. He said: "The public expects us to act firmly and swiftly if we see any social misbehaviour by women, and men, who defy our Islamic values. In some areas of north Tehran we can see many suntanned women and young girls who look like walking mannequins. We are not going to tolerate this situation and will first warn those found in this manner and then arrest and imprison them."

...The announcement came shortly after Ayatollah Kazim Sadighi, a leading cleric, warned that women who dressed immodestly disturbed young men and the consequent agitation caused earthquakes.

There's some info about Iranian hip hop here. Check out Dasta Bala by Deev - don't have a full tranlsation but apparently 'The song was focused at pointing out the tyranny of the Iranian government and asking people to raise their fists in protest'. Some good photos of Iranian musicians here.

On the side of the dancers, the dirt and the dust

'Order reigns in Tehran!' You stupid henchmen! Your 'order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already 'raise itself with a rattle' and announce with fanfare, to your terror:I was, I am, I shall be!" (OK so in the original Rosa Luxemburg quote it's Berlin rather than Tehran, but the sentiments still apply)

The repression continues in Iran, but so too does resistance. What started out as a protest about the election results has turned into a more fundamental challenge to the Islamic Republic.

The (officially) defeated election candidate Mousavi has blood on his hands just like the (officially) victorious Ahmadinejad. He was Prime Minister in the 1980s at a time of executions of political prisoners and the butchery of the Iran-Iraq war. But the protests on the streets have drawn on a wider resentment against religious repression and economic hardship - both of which have got worse over the past couple of years, as Azadeh Moaveni observes

Late that summer [2007], authorities launched a full-scale campaign of intimidation against young people they accused of un-Islamic appearance. Within a few short weeks, police detained 150,000 people, and all the women in my life went out to buy the shapeless, long coats that we had worn back in the late 1990s. Though the campaign targeted young men as well, authorities singled out women with particular brutality... To add to Iranians' frustration, interminable queues accompanied the government's petrol-rationing scheme, unveiled that summer. In the evenings it could take several hours to fill our car, and when our local petrol station was torched by rioters furious with the new plan, we stopped using the car. Iran's streets began to remind me of postwar Baghdad. Censorship had been stepped up such that seventh editions of sociology textbooks were not receiving permits to reprint. The ominous white morality police vans that patrolled the streets kept young people in a permanent state of anxiety. One morning, while taking my baby for a stroll near the mountains, a teenage policewoman grabbed by arm and tried to lead me to a police van. "Your sleeves are too short," she barked'.

In the turmoil leading up to the election, there was some space created, at least for some: '“We were singing, dancing in the streets, boys and girls together. We had never done this before. No one wanted to go home'. Things are clearly now much more sombre, but determined:

'I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favourite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again... I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them' .

Ahmadinejad meanwhile has denounced his opponents as 'dirt and dust' and of 'officially recognising thieves, homosexuals and scumbags'.

The movement cannot be dismissed as just a few middle class students caught up in a faction fight within the Iranian state (a view I have head expressed at a meeting in London last week). Interestingly, Khodro Auto Workers staged a slow down in support of the demonstrators last week. Similarly the Syndicate of Workers of Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company have endorsed the protests, despite their opposition to all of the state-picked candidates in the election. There have also been protests by hospital workers at the Rasul Akram hsospital in Tehran.

On the music front, a number of songs have already appeared dedicated to Neda Aghan Soltan, shot dead by state forces last week, here's just one of them:

Mohammad Reza Shajarian, one of Iran's most famous singers, has written to the state broadcaster IRIB demanding that they stop playing his songs.

Further reports/analysis: Revolutionary Road , Hands of People of Iran, Socialist Blogs, Worker Communist Party of Iran (their poster reproduced below)

From Tehran with Love

One of the things I like about 'blogging' (like earlier fanzine production) is the possibility of direct communication with unmediated voices from around the world - rather than dealing with organisations and party lines. One such voice is Selma at From Tehran with Love. As well as being a fellow Leonard Cohen enthusiast, Selma has posted on being a woman in Iran faced with the religious police: 'the second before going out of the door every morning, you look into the mirror not asking yourself “do I look good” or “how does my hair look today” but wondering if what you are wearing is “legal” and fearing what if this manteau isn’t long enough (below knees, wearing trousers mandatory too) and if it is loose enough and if black is dark enough for them?'.

I noticed that in response to a government threat to crack down on blogs she posted these lines:

One day we’ll sing our freedom
One day we’ll laugh in our joy
And we’ll dance

Dance as synonym for freedom, right up my street, so naturally I googled to check the source and found out that they were actually from a song by... Sting ("We'll be together"). Let's just say I've never been a big fan! I've always had him down as very smug and comfortable, preaching platitudes from some tantric cloud. But actually, reading the lyrics, I thought it was quite remarkable that he'd written a song about the disappeared in Chile (murdered by the state in the aftermath of the 1973 military coup). Remarkable too that he'd structured the song around the image of the dance:

They're dancing with the missing
They're dancing with the dead
They dance with the invisible ones
Their anguish is unsaid
They're dancing with their fathers
They're dancing with their sons
They're dancing with their husbands
They dance alone
They dance alone

One day we'll dance on their graves
One day we'll sing our freedom
One day we'll laugh in our joy
And we'll dance

Even more remarkable that this song, written about events in South America thirty years ago, should inspire dreams of freedom in the Middle East today. And remarkable too that I should be moved to post about a songwriter whose work I have always dismissed out of hand. Another prejudice challenged. Still haven't listened to the song mind!

Seven (more) songs

The seven songs meme is still doing the rounds - it goes like this:

'List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to'.

I must admit I've already had a bite of the cherry at my South Londonist blog Transpontine (having been tagged by Rough in Here and Someday I will treat you good). Now I've been tagged here by Simon Reynolds, and since I go through all the effort of maintaining two blogs, I don't see why I shouldn't have two shots at this.

Rather than spending time thinking about what my current seven favourite songs are (which is a bit Hi Fidelity for my taste) I'm just going to list some found objects - seven songs I heard over the weekend that meant something to me.

Something old

B-52s - Give me back my man ('I'll give you fish, I'll give you candy')- because this was the first record I danced to at a friend's party on Saturday night at a pub in Kings Cross. It reminded me of all the other parties where I've danced to this band, to this track/Rock Lobster/Planet Claire/Love Shack/Party Gone Out of Bounds.

Something new

Black Kids - I'm not gonna teach your boyfriend how to dance. Because this was one of the last records I danced to on Saturday, a Robert Smith-channeling refusal to assist a love rival with two left feet. There's a good even dancier remix of this one floating around (and Kate Nash has already covered it).

Something borrowed

Roy Davis Jr. - Gabriel (Large Joints Remix) - well not so much borrowed as a steal, 20p from a car boot sale in Rotherhithe on a mix cd (Sound of the Pirates - the garage sound of uk pirate radio mixed by Zed Bias). Garage angelology - you see the the archangel of love popped by to tell you that 'one love was the focus of the true message'. So take your communion on the dancefloor: 'Dancing soon became a way to communicate, Feel the music deep in your soul'.

Something blue

Leonard Cohen - Famous Blue Raincoat - because I sat down on Sunday with the assorted strummers of the Brockley Ukulele Group and played this. I note, via Bob from Brockley, that another seven songs respondent, From Tehran with Love, chose no fewer than 5 Cohen songs. As long as the worlds greatest Canadian-Jewish-Zen Buddhist songwriter remains venerated by some in predominately Muslim Iran, there is hope for the world (the Iranian singer Farhad Mehrad has covered some Cohen songs)

Something in a movie

Belle and Sebastian - Expectations - a long time favourite of mine which I was delighted to hear on the soundtrack to the teen pregnancy movie Juno, which I watched on Saturday. 'Your obsessions get you known throughout the school for being strange, Making life-size models of the Velvet Underground in clay'.

Something in a book

Huggy Bear - Her Jazz - because I am reading a book about Riot Grrrl. This still sounds a fresh and urgent call to arms -'Girl Boy Revolution Yeah'.

Something on TV

2 Unlimited - No Limits - because the video was on one of those freeview music channels on Friday night as part of one of those 50 cheesiest pop songs ever programmes. I do have a soft spot for late 80s/early 90s production line techno-pop, it’s a toss up between Technotronic and 2 Unlimited for the techno-pop crown. It amuses me that they are both from Belgium, at the time also home to the super-credible house/techno label R&S. In the high street/holiday resort clubs of the time it was 2 Unlimited rather than Joey Beltram that filled the floor. I remember being in a club in West Belfast (think it was the Trinity Lodge in Turf Lodge) and when they played ‘Get Ready for This’ loads of people started chanting IRA in time to the chorus. That was a lesson for me in how the products of the pop production line get used in ways the producers could never dream of.

I tagged some people last time who responded including Uncarved and Speakers Push Air. Looking round it appears that most people I know in both the music and South London neighbourhoods of the blogosphere have already been tagged, so this time I am just going to leave it open. If you fancy listing seven songs, just go for it.

Iranian parties raided

Police in the Iranian city of Karaj have been busy, busting two parties in a week:

Iranian police arrest partygoers (BBC News, 9 August 2007)

Police in Iran say they have arrested 20 young people at a party in the city of Karaj, north-west of the capital Tehran, on Wednesday night. More than 200 people were arrested a week ago in the same city for attending an illegal rock concert... Police Col Majid Bazmun told the state Irna news agency that police surrounded the building in Karaj where the "decadent gathering" was taking place after acting on a tip-off from a member of the public.

Iran's chief of police, Esmaeel Ahmadi Moghaddam, said that the crackdown of recent months, described officially as the drive to "elevate security in society", would continue as it had proved popular with the public.

Iranian morals police arrest 230 in raid on 'satanist' rave (Guardian 5 August 2007)

'Iran's drive to enforce Islamic morals netted revellers from Britain and Sweden after police swooped on a "satanic" concert organised over the internet. Police arrested 230 people and seized drugs, alcohol and 800 illicit CDs after raiding the event in Karaj, 12 miles west of Tehran. Those arrested included young women in skimpy and "inappropriate" clothing, officers said...

The event included rock and rap performers as well as female singers, who are banned under Iran's Islamic laws. The authorities described the artistes as "satanist" without elaborating. Iran's rulers routinely label much of western-style popular music and culture as decadent. Preparations were kept so secret that revellers were made aware of the venue only hours before the rave.

Last Wednesday's raid occurred during a government-backed "social security" campaign in which police have arrested or cautioned thousands of women whose dress or headscarves have been deemed insufficiently Islamic... Authorities last month doubled the number of officers deployed on morals patrols. Police have been instructed to arrest young men with "western" hairstyles. Those arrested are released only after giving the names of their barbers and making signed commitments to get hair-cuts. They then have to return to the police station to show their new hairstyles'.

Picture of parents of those arrested waiting outside Karaj police station from For a democratic secular Iran

London South Bank

One of the best things about being in London in the summer is taking in the free music events, official and unofficial, along the South Bank of the Thames. Over the years, I have seen some really memorable gigs there, notably Natacha Atlas and A Man Called Adam, both of them outside the National Theatre with a fake lawn temporarily covering the concrete square.


The last couple of weeks have been particularly busy. On Sunday, the Celebrating Sanctuary event took place as part of Refugee Week, gathering 'together established and emerging refugee musicians, dancers and artists to celebrate the positive cultural contribution of refugees to the UK'. At the two outdoor stages and a large yurt, I caught performances by The Destroyers, a Birmingham-based Balkan dance band, the Ahwazi Group, playing music from the Arab minority in Western Iran, and some Armenian dancing. As stated on the festival website, 'In music there are no borders. When you have no borders, you have no refugees.’


The weekend before saw the official reopening of the Festival Hall after its refurbishment. On the terraces outside we saw up and coming South London appalachian enthusiasts Indigo Moss and Billy Bragg doing a set of buskers standards such as Goodnight Irene and Underneath the Arches.


Outside of the official programe and further along the river, No Fixed Abode managed to get a sound system down on to the sand at low tide for a free party (pictured). There have been Reclaim the Beach events here since 2000.

Dancing Santa Faces Deportation

No One is Illegal in Vancouver are fighting against the deportation of an Iranian refugee, well known in the local community for his dancing.

"Refugee claimant Iraj Ghahremani, 70, has danced as a "Santa Claus" in North Vancouver's Iranian new year festivals since he fled Iran in 1999. But now that Canada has denied him refugee status and ordered Mr. Ghahremani deported next week, the Iranian community fears it will lose a dancer much-loved by children, and that Mr. Ghahremani will be imprisoned in a country where it is forbidden to dance in public.

"I want to bring happiness to the Persian community," Mr. Ghahremani said. "Right now dancing in Iran is forbidden, it's suppressed, they don't like that kind of happiness." Ray Negini, a friend, added: "He helped people and has made the children laugh. He is a humorous person who will not be abandoned. No one can replace him."

Mr. Ghahremani plays Haji Firouz, a boisterous traditional figure whose songs and dances herald the coming of Norouz, the Iranian new year. Clad entirely in red with a pointy hat, Iranians liken him to Santa Claus - a well-known figure in traditional celebrations who has little meaning in religion. This was his favourite character when Iran was under the regime of the shah, which crumbled under the Islamic revolution in 1979. Among the reforms demanded by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomaini in the new Islamic Republic was a strict prohibition against dancing in public.

"Religion mixed with the government, and the fanatic part was that no one could dance," Mr. Negini said. "Iraj abandoned [dancing] because the government wouldn't allow him to do that." Mr. Ghahremani became an activist in the Islamic Iran, said Davood Ghavami, his lawyer and community advocate. Mr. Ghahremani was arrested for membership in the opposition party, the National Front of Iran. When he was released, he came to Canada in 1999 and claimed refugee status' (more here)