Photographer Stephan Lucka is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography. From the project ‘Forbidden Voices’. To see Stephan’s body of work, click on any image.
“Freedom is the least I want“, Meshkat says to me, stepping towards the microphone, singing one of her own original English songs.
We are at an illegal jam session in a private flat somewhere in the north of Tehran. Meshkat is a female vocalist, twenty-seven years of age, but she is not actually free to sing. In Iran women are not allowed to sing in public by law, because their voices could “arouse sexual feeling in men “, at least according to leading religious teachers in Iran. Violations can be punished by fine, prison or even lashes.
Nevertheless, there are women in Iran who are ambitious, even professional, vocalists. I accompanied some of them to concerts, illegal jam sessions, studio gigs, to music lessons and visited them at home. I am a musician myself; I went to the conservatory to study the electric bass.
It was hard for me to imagine my profession being forbidden by state law. With this personal identification I was approaching the subject.
But this is about more than just music. The female vocalists are a symbol of young, slowly changing society for me, being in a constant conflict between tradition and modernism. A society in which a static construct of religion and state is opposing the constant, dynamic change of globalization.
They stand for the search of a new hybrid cultural identity.
All images and text © Stephan Lucka
See also:
By Stephan Lucka
Edge of Humanity Magazine’s
FREE Projects & Other Services
To Promote Works From Artists,
Photographers, Poets & Writers
CONTRACT FREE
online platform for artists to sell their creations
Photo Curator
PHOTOGRAPHY BOOK, SHORT STORIES & MUSIC Recommendations FREE Platform For Artists NO MIDDLEMAN ART GALLERY In The Mind Of An Artist Open Submissions for Writers & Poets Photo Curator PRESS RELEASE On Edge of Humanity Magazine Photography Articles
Edge of Humanity Magazine is an independent nondiscriminatory platform that has no religious, political, financial, or social affiliations.
We are committed to publishing the human condition, the raw diverse global entanglement, with total impartiality.
Poetry BLOG By Edge of Humanity Magazine
By Edge of Humanity Magazine
Support This Small Independent Magazine
Please
DONATE
Follow Edge of Humanity Magazine
Email Subscriptions
WordPress Bloggers
Follow Edge of Humanity Magazine on WordPress.com
Not on WordPress?
Don’t Forget to add
to your reader or bookmarks
Thank you!
This is so inspiring, but also so sad. It’s inspiring because of the perseverance of these women. I don’t write consistently for stupid, baby reasons, like lack of confidence and fear of rejection. Methinks, I need to toughen up. 🙂
The Iranians are wonderful and friendly people. I miss the Iranian friends I had from when I lived in Germany. It’s just so wrong that the afore freedom experienced (until the early 1970s) continues to be so cruelly denied them. Brave women. Much respect to you.