Raving Iran

"In June [2016], two musicians and one filmmaker started a three-year jail sentence in Iran for distributing underground music that hadn’t been licensed by Iran’s Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance." They were found guilty of “insulting Islamic sanctities” and “spreading propaganda against the system”. [Electronic Beats]

For you me, friends in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris, Rome, Zurich, Kiev, Brussels and Antwerp (to name but a few of our 'rave' cities!), the concept of underground music has become our everyday. Whilst we're all too familiar with licensing problems, the party is still accessible and promotion is a given. In Iran however, a scene has emerged but it's a scene very different to the one that we know, 'undercover', restricted by politics and lived out in the shadows of the desert plains.German filmmaker Susanne Regina Meures features the past lives of two Iranian artists Anoosh and Arash in her upcoming documentary 'Raving Iran'. Now living in Switzerland, the pair (aka Blake and Beard) speak to Berlin-based (Iranian) DJ Namito in an Electronic Beats interview about their experience of the clandestine rave culture, passions that were awakened by 'Western' sounds and the search for a life synonymous to music, outside of Iran.

"...most journalists try to drag the subject to a political level. I told them neither my age nor my profession are political. The only thing that might be political is that I wish that I could do what I love in my own homeland..." [Electronic Beats]

'Raving Iran' is due to premier at Berlin’s Volksbühne on September 26, 2016.

Full interview here: http://www.electronicbeats.net/raving-iran/

Watch the trailer here!