On Saturday 16 May 2015, the five-member Iranian pop-rock band ‘Piclavier’ appeared on the stage at Eivan-e Shams Concert Hall for the very first time. It was only a few months ago that they became authorized to perform their westernized music coupled with ‘a little flair of eastern schools of thought in the poetry of the music soul’ to Iranian music lovers: the newer generations of youth, who according to the band vocalist, composer, guitarist and frontman Mehran Mokhtarpour, comprise growing number of teenagers learning different languages and wanting to be provided with a kind of music that ‘speaks with them through multiple layers.’
A quick search in Google does not bring up anything for the word ‘Piclavier’, so that must be a new coinage by the creative band members.
“Piclavier is a combination of two words,” clarifies Mehran Mokhtarpour, “‘Pick’ like a guitar pick, and ‘clavier’ which is the French word for piano. We were looking for a new lifeless word and Shayan (Keyboards) and I came up with this. The word itself has two parts, an English word and a French word, it was a while after coining it that we realized it was also related to my instrument and his instrument as well. I also play the rhythm guitars for the band. It was a lucky accident.”
Formed a few years ago by Shayan Karimi and himself, Mokhtarpour tells us they aimed at introducing what they believe to be rock music to the music scene of Iran.
“Although there have been good musicians who had already done this, we still felt like something was missing. This music was not misrepresented, but it has not been exactly presented to the genre’s full potential,” says Piclavier’s frontman, describing the sound of their music as the combination of the true nature of rock (harsher sounds and instruments) and ideals of eastern thoughts like faith and love.
It would not be so far off the mark to assume that from a western perspective, the notion of a rock concert in an Iranian music hall is hard, if not impossible, to digest. Mokhtarpour, however, tells us music in Iran is currently going through a ‘golden age.’
This could be a fair assessment. This year’s International Fajr Music Festival that took place in February gave the stage to seven female music ensembles to perform music in various genres such as traditional, classical, folklore and pop music. It also brought musicians from Russia, Netherlands, Austria, Italy and Switzerland to Iranian stages. The criteria for what constitutes ‘legal’ music have become slightly more lax after Ali Jannati took office as President Rouhani’s minister of Culture in August 2013.
Mokhtarpour elaborates, “we have passed the early stages of pop music [in Iran] and as a rule in world music, whenever a certain style becomes overly used or is ‘saturated’ it would be fast replaced by a different style, a more progressive one or something that audience could easily get belonged with. While we have a very financially successful popular or ‘pop’ music artists in Iran, with the emergence of a heavier music (like rock), this thirst is slowly being quenched, and we would like to be a part of it. We have so much to offer, and that’s what we plan to do. Our concert was met with very positive feedback, and that’s a sure sign we’re on the right path.”
While music licensing in many countries mostly means copyrights laws and intellectual property, in Iran it is extended to include other areas as well. Being an Islamic country sensitive on the content and form of cultural products that reach the public, any musician who wishes to be able to legally sell albums and perform on the stage must first obtain a permit from Iranian Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.
Mokhtarpour tells us his band started the credit process and permission obtaining months ago; “our first step was to submit the band name, Piclavier, then we submitted my lyrics with their official translation in Persian, which were accepted as quality work. The final step was to record the songs in video format as we would perform on the stage. Within a few weeks all the songs and their lyrics were accepted, and later on we got even commended as the first band of the country with this style of work. We have written all our songs and lyrics ourselves, a 100% original work, and I believe one of the reasons that we would stand out in the scene is that we don’t cover or interpret any other artist’s work. The whole process, from A to Z, was a fun ride, not easy, but fun.”
When asked if they have had any performance in an international festival yet, the charismatic vocalist tells us that they haven’t; “we had our debut a while ago but our real big concert was the one we just performed in Eivan-e Shams Hall. A few of our lyrics were already recognized internationally though, namely ‘A House of Cards’ which was the finalist in the Voices Poetry Competition a couple of years back.”
But how is the situation for an Iranian rock band which wishes to gain foreign exposure? Mokhtarpour says it’s all about a ‘mission statement.’ “If a band wants to go places, the first thing I believe they need, is to make sure that they’re locally successful even if marginally at first. A band needs a mission statement. They need to be able to answer the ‘Why’ and ‘What’ questions in the industry; why do they believe they could be successful in this overpopulated world, and what is it that separates them from the other bands?”
“And this is a lesson I learned by meticulously studying music industry for the last few years. There’s a new music band every other week being formed and disbanded. They are often very talented and artistically driven but they lack that statement. A successful band in the world, not only in a country, requires a collective of features, not just being tremendous musicians, they have to have a plan. They need to introduce something that has not existed already in the industry which, trust me, is a hard job in this progressive universe.”
Being a musician in Iran is hard work, considering the legalization process, relatively limited audience and the general lack of proper channels to distribute the works of arts. Mokhtarpour tells us with a solid plan and patience, money can be made from music, good money even, but it all comes back to the nature of the band and the devotion of the band mates.
“There is money in music in Iran, perhaps even more than many places around the world for a new band, and yes, we can sell our albums in Iran. If you look closely, you can see a tremendous amount of money being transferred with each release of a good album that takes off with a ‘mission statement’.”
The Saturday performance concluded with the highlight of a rock song about the band members’ protest against injustice, war, violence and the killing of innocent people. Named ‘Angels Will Rise’, the song featured English lyrics, heavy drum beats and powerful guitar riffs with videos of the inhuman Israeli war against the Palestinians playing on the silver screen. Mokhtarpour told us the song prominently deals with the fact that “evil, regardless of its shape, face or name will one day fall and justice will prevail. In its essence we are, like any human with basic emotions, against war and violence.”
As a shy child who had found music as the perfect vessel through which to express himself, Mokhtarpour says he had been writing stories and poems in English and French long before the band came to be, hence the non-Persian lyrics to his songs.
“I firmly believe that the nature of rock music is extremely occidental. It comes from a different part of the world than where we are right now. Trying to force-feed Persian language, while very beautiful for other styles of music, to rock music would be a disgrace to my mother tongue and would really deform the face of the music as it is intended to be in non-Persian language.”
Of course there have been a number of famous musicians in Iran who had attempted to create rock music with Persian lyrics, and while a few examples have managed to make the music sound good, Mokhtarpour, however, had wanted to play it safe. Especially now that they are the first official non-Persian lyrics rock band of Iran, according to the official records. Their English songs also help the band to send their message to the international community all the more easily. As Mokhtarpour has said, Iran is currently going through a ‘golden age’ in terms of what constitutes as a legal and appropriate cultural product befitting an Islamic country. The music scene in Iran has started to take a deep breath in the fresh air and stretch its languid metaphorical limbs thanks to the tremendous efforts of the Ministry of Culture to give this popular form of art a chance to prove its worth.