Farzaneh Hemmasi, "Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music" (Duke UP, 2020)

New Books in American Studies · Oct 12, 2020 · 1h 2m

Farzaneh Hemmasi is the author of Tehrangeles Dreaming: Intimacy and Imagination in Southern California's Iranian Pop Music (Duke UP, 2020). The title obviously refers the song "California Dreamin'," but in this case the "Dreaming" refers to the active imagining, or reimagining, of Iranian and Persian identity by the artistic community that relocated to southern California following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In our discussion, Farzaneh and I discuss the history of popular music in Iran, the correlation between notions of morality and music in general, and women's voices in particular, and…