Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Soundtrack of the Revolution
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.nahidsiamdoust.com/
CITY: Brooklyn
STATE: NY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://www.nahidsiamdoust.com/about/ * http://neareaststudies.as.nyu.edu/object/kc.people.siamdoust * http://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=24949
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Daughter of Hamideh Seraj Anssari and Mir Ali Akbar Seyed Siamdoust; married Andrew Lee Butters, 2010.
EDUCATION:Barnard College, B.A.; Columbia University, M.A.; St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Journalist and educator. Yale University, MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies, postdoctoral associate and lecturer, 2017—. Taught at Oxford University and at New York University’s Steinhardt Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. Worked as a journalist in the Middle East for Time, Los Angeles Times, and Der Spiegel; Al Jazeera English TV, correspondent and producer, 2006-07.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Nahid Seyed Siamdoust is an educator and former journalist. She is a postdoctoral associate and lecturer at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. In her academic career, she has also been an instructor at Oxford University and New York University. Previously, she served as a journalist covering the Middle East for print publications such as Time, Der Spiegel, and the Los Angeles Times. She was also a correspondent and producer for Al Jazeera English TV.
Siamdoust’s book Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran covers the role of music in Iran in the years following the revolution. The author provides an in-depth analysis that shows the place music held in social, cultural, and political arenas in the strict Middle Eastern country.
Siamdoust begins her assessment in 1979, when the embattled Shah of Iran was ousted and Iran came under the control of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Her end point is the Green Revolution in 2009. She carefully considers Iranian music and musicians, both from a cultural and political standpoint, for the thirty-year period between 1979 and 2009.
After Khomeini’s ascent to power, music was banned in Iraq for several months before being given a reprieve and a tenuous legal status. Siamdoust notes how Iraq used music as a propaganda tool during the Iran-Iraq War. She also shows how music slowly made a return in Iraqi public and private life, even as musicians and those who enjoyed music continued to wonder when hardliners might ban it again. She focuses on the music of four performers: Mohammad Reza Shajarian, a folk singer; Alireza Assar, a pop musician; Mohsen Namjoo, who plays rock music; and Hichkas, a rapper who became popular on YouTube. In the stories of these musicians, Siamdoust depicts how they defied censorship and the influence of the state, both in the performance of the music and in the presence of women in music in defiance of heavy-handed Iraqi suppression.
In total, Siamdoust shows how music was used for political purposes, how it became a source of protest and subversion of government power, and how the younger population of Iraq is using music both as creative expression and rebellion against political forces they do not like. A Publishers Weekly reviewer called Soundtrack of the Revolution “impressive in its scope and depth,” and noted that the book would be fascinating to readers who are “interested in modern Iran’s complex history and politics, as well as its music.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Chronicle of Higher Education, February 17, 2017, Nina C. Ayoub, “New Scholarly Books,” p. B14.
New York Times, June 13, 2010, marriage announcement of Nahid Siamdoust, p. 15.
Publishers Weekly, January 1, 2017, review of Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran.
ONLINE
Nahid Seyed Siamdoust Website, http://www.nahidsiamdoust.com (September 4, 2017).
Stanford University Press Website, http://www.sup.org/ (September 4, 2017), description of Soundtrack of the Revolution.*
DESC.
REVIEWS
MORE
History / Middle East
Middle East Studies
Politics / Middle East
Anthropology / Middle East
Music was one of the first casualties of the Iranian Revolution. It was banned in 1979, but it quickly crept back into Iranian culture and politics. The state made use of music for its propaganda during the Iran–Iraq war. Over time music provided an important political space where artists and audiences could engage in social and political debate. Now, more than thirty-five years on, both the children of the revolution and their music have come of age. Soundtrack of the Revolution offers a striking account of Iranian culture, politics, and social change to provide an alternative history of the Islamic Republic.
Drawing on over five years of research in Iran, including during the 2009 protests, Nahid Siamdoust introduces a full cast of characters, from musicians and audience members to state officials, and takes readers into concert halls and underground performances, as well as the state licensing and censorship offices. She closely follows the work of four musicians—a giant of Persian classical music, a government-supported pop star, a rebel rock-and-roller, and an underground rapper—each with markedly different political views and relations with the Iranian government. Taken together, these examinations of musicians and their music shed light on issues at the heart of debates in Iran—about its future and identity, changing notions of religious belief, and the quest for political freedom.
Siamdoust shows that even as state authorities resolve, for now, to allow greater freedoms to Iran's majority young population, they retain control and can punish those who stray too far. But music will continue to offer an opening for debate and defiance. As the 2009 Green Uprising and the 1979 Revolution before it have proven, the invocation of a potent melody or musical verse can unite strangers into a powerful public.
About the author
Nahid Siamdoust teaches at New York University's Steinhardt Department of Media, Culture, and Communication. She has taught at Oxford University, and previously worked as a journalist based in Iran and the Middle East for Time magazine, Der Spiegel, and Al Jazeera English TV.
About
Nahid & Andrew 2013-192
Nahid Siamdoust is a Post-doctoral Associate and Lecturer at Yale University’s MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies as of Fall 2017. Prior to that she taught at New York University’s Steinhardt Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, and was a research scholar at NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. After she obtained her doctorate in Modern Middle Eastern Studies at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University, she taught at Oxford as an Associate of the Sub-Faculty of Near and Middle East Studies.
Her first book, Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran, was published by Stanford University Press in 2017.
She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Art History from Barnard College, and a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University.
Before returning to academia and concurrently with her studies, Nahid worked as a full-time Iran and Middle East based journalist for Der Spiegel, TIME Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, and Al Jazeera English TV.
Her academic research focuses on the intersection between politics, culture and media (music included) in Iran and the wider Middle East.
She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
Nahid Siamdoust, Andrew Butters
The New York Times. (June 13, 2010): Lifestyle: p15(L).
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com
Listen
Full Text:
Nahid Seyed Siamdoust and Andrew Lee Butters were married Friday at the First Presbyterian Church in New York. The Rev. Dr. Jon Walton, the church's senior pastor, performed the ceremony.
On Saturday, Dr. Hashem Hosseini, an Islamic marriage officiant, led a Persian ceremony at the country home of the bridegroom's parents in Greenville, Del.
The bride, 33, is a candidate for a doctorate in modern Middle Eastern studies at St. Antony's College, Oxford. She graduated from Barnard College and received a master's in international affairs from Columbia. She is a freelance writer for Time magazine, for which she also covered Iranian politics and culture until 2005. From 2006 to 2007, she was a correspondent and producer for the English-language channel of Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar.
She is a daughter of Hamideh Seraj Anssari of Newton, Mass., and the late Mir Ali Akbar Seyed Siamdoust. Her father founded and owned Heriz Export, a Persian-carpet manufacturing and trading company in Tehran and Hamburg, Germany.
Mr. Butters, 37, is a Middle East correspondent for Time and works in Beirut, Lebanon. He graduated from Brown and received two master's degrees, one in history from Cambridge University and the other in journalism from Columbia.
He is a son of Virginia Lee Butters and David J. Butters of New York. His father is the chief executive of Navigator Gas Transport , a London shipping company. He works in New York.
The couple met in Tehran in February 2009 while they both were covering the 30th anniversary of the Iranian revolution for Time.