{"id":41534,"date":"2026-01-16T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T15:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=41534"},"modified":"2026-02-08T07:25:55","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T15:25:55","slug":"googoosh-the-voice-of-iran-has-gone-quiet-and-thats-her-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/googoosh-the-voice-of-iran-has-gone-quiet-and-thats-her-point\/","title":{"rendered":"Googoosh, the \u2018Voice of Iran,\u2019 has gone quiet \u2013 and that\u2019s her point"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Richard Nedjat-Haiem<\/a>, University of California, Santa Barbara<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before Beyonc\u00e9, before Cher, before Madonna, there was Googoosh<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 75-year-old Iranian megastar catapulted to stardom in Iran during the 1970s, only to be silenced by the Islamist regime that took power after the 1979 Islamic Revolution<\/a>. In 2000, she was finally allowed to leave Iran to live in exile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Iranians \u2013 particularly those in the diaspora \u2013 Googoosh symbolizes an era of cosmopolitanism in late-Pahlavi Iran<\/a>, the period from the mid-1950s until 1979 when Iran\u2019s popular music, cinema, television and fashion embraced modernity and questioned social norms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as protests roil Iran<\/a> and the nation\u2019s clerical leaders find their grip on power slipping, the \u201cVoice of Iran<\/a>,\u201d as Googoosh is known, hasn\u2019t turned up the volume. Instead, she\u2019s found herself putting her farewell tour on pause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEveryone is waiting for my last concert in LA,\u201d Googoosh told reporters in December 2025<\/a>, \u201cbut \u2026 I am not going to sing until my country is rescued.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Googoosh\u2019s refusal to sing is not a sign of hesitation but a conscious political gesture \u2013 one that draws its force from her singular position in Iran\u2019s cultural history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past several years, I\u2019ve studied Googoosh\u2019s trajectory as a musical and cultural icon<\/a>. For Iranians inside and outside the country, she\u2019s been a canvas onto which they\u2019ve projected nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Iran, memories of rupture and loss, and fantasies of resistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A star is born<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Born Faegheh Atashin in 1950, Googoosh was raised in Tehran by Muslim Azeri parents who had fled Soviet Azerbaijan. Although civil authorities registered her under the Perso-Arabic name Faegheh, her stage name, \u201cGoogoosh\u201d \u2013 actually a male Armenian name<\/a> \u2013 endured.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She grew up onstage and onscreen. Her father, an acrobat, incorporated her into his act when she was just 3 years old<\/a>; by the age of 4, she was the family\u2019s primary breadwinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she matured, Googoosh moved across music, cinema, fashion and dance, rising to prominence within a cultural landscape shaped by Western influences and aligned with the state\u2019s modernizing ambitions. By the mid-1970s, she had become the most recognizable figure of Iran\u2019s pre-revolutionary popular culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Iranian studies scholar Abbas Milani<\/a>, Googoosh \u201cembodied the frivolous joys, the reckless abandon, the exuberant era of social experimentation, the defiant desire to debunk tradition and its taboos, and the vigor and vitality of youth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Onscreen, she wore the newest styles and cuts. Young Iranians copied her hair and hemlines. She danced, posed and sang like a global star \u2013 alongside Persian, she recorded in English<\/a>, French<\/a>, Italian<\/a>, Spanish<\/a>, Arabic<\/a> and Turkish<\/a> \u2013 and, in the process, redefined what a female pop star could look like in Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Exiled from the stage<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Yet to some Islamist critics of the Pahlavi order, she symbolized \u201cgharbzadegi<\/a>,\u201d also known as \u201cWestoxication\u201d \u2013 the belief that by embracing the West, Iranians were betraying the traditions of their people and bringing about moral decay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the year preceding the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Googoosh had a residency at a Los Angeles club. Yet while many artists fled Iran in the wake of the revolution to rebuild their careers, Googoosh returned, only to be swiftly punished for her past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Authorities charged her in 1979 with \u201cmoral corruption<\/a>.\u201d A couple of years later, the new regime briefly incarcerated her, confiscated her passport and prohibited her from publicly performing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just like that, a central figure in the nation\u2019s cultural life was removed from the spotlight. It would be 21 years before she would perform again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Googoosh wasn\u2019t alone; musicians and performers across the country encountered the same fate: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini<\/a>, Iran\u2019s supreme leader from 1979 to 1989, saw music as a vice. The regime also categorically prohibited women<\/a> from performing solo in public. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 2025, she published her memoir, \u201cGoogoosh: A Sinful Voice<\/a>.\u201d In it, she opens up about this period of her life \u2013 and her decision to return to Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though she was at the height of her fame in the late-1970s, she alleges that her managers had misappropriated her earnings. As revolutionary unrest intensified and the Pahlavi regime imposed martial law and closed cabarets and theaters in an attempt to appease conservatives<\/a>, her sources of income vanished. This prompted the move to Los Angeles. But mounting debt and substance abuse issues influenced her decision to return home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She writes that revolutionary hostility wasn\u2019t simply directed at popular culture; it went after pleasure itself, particularly when embraced, celebrated or expressed by women. To the Islamic Republic, music was not a form of art or a vocation; it was a provocation and a moral abomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Googoosh, who\u2019d been a practicing Shiite Muslim who prayed, fasted and went on pilgrimage, describes the shock she felt that so much cruelty could coexist with claims of religious piety following the Islamic Revolution. Personal faith and public, secular performances had not been seen as contradictions in pre-revolutionary Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That all changed in 1979.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iranian culture in exile<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The revolution catalyzed a mass cultural exodus: Millions of Iranians fled the country<\/a>, with many settling in California, where other popular singers such as Hayedeh<\/a>, Mahasti<\/a> and Homeyra<\/a> rebuilt their careers in exile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
An issue of Zan-e Rooz magazine, which translates to \u2018Women of Today,\u2019 features, from left, Googoosh, Mahasti and Ramesh, three of Iran\u2019s biggest pop stars in the 1970s. ramesh._music\/Instagram<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A proxy Iranian entertainment industry emerged in Los Angeles, allowing Iranian popular culture to live on<\/a> outside the Islamic Republic. In what came to be called \u201cTehrangeles<\/a>,\u201d studios recorded Persian-language music and television, while entrepreneurs opened cabaret-style performance venues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The entertainment infrastructure built in Tehrangeles later expanded to Europe, Canada and the Persian Gulf; much of the programming was saturated with motifs of memory, longing and nostalgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Googoosh\u2019s two decades off the stage had only amplified her mystique. When she finally received permission to leave Iran in 2000, she performed her first concert<\/a> at Toronto\u2019s Air Canada Centre before a sold-out crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, she\u2019s recorded nine albums. Yet most of her fans have shown limited interest in these newer offerings. When she sings them, chants of \u201cGhadimi! Ghadimi!\u201d (\u201cOld! Old!\u201d) often rise from the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many in the diaspora, they turn to Googoosh not to engage the present but to transport themselves to an earlier era \u2013 effectively freezing her, and their memories of Iran, in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Silence reclaimed<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Once silenced by the Islamic Republic, Googoosh now voluntarily withholds her voice in solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I see this refusal as a reclamation of her agency; with Iran again roiled by mass mobilization and protest, her silence resonates as loudly as her songs once did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Googoosh has long functioned as a vessel for collective memory, she now stands as a reminder that memory alone is not enough \u2013 that nostalgia cannot stand in for a political reckoning, and that voices shaped by exile remain tethered to unfinished struggles at home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richard Nedjat-Haiem<\/a>, Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature, University of California, Santa Barbara<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richard Nedjat-Haiem, University of California, Santa Barbara Before Beyonc\u00e9, before Cher, before Madonna, there was Googoosh. The 75-year-old Iranian megastar catapulted to stardom in Iran during the 1970s, only to be silenced by the Islamist regime that took power after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 2000, she was finally allowed to leave Iran to live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":41535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[293,279,7,10,40,36,38],"tags":[15,2122,17366,17365,1828,16573,885,891,886,860,2031,5226,53,592,15394,5640,1382],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41534"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41706,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41534\/revisions\/41706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}