Cultures of Resistance

The language of music is universal. Although each culture produces its own specific musical forms, the appeal that these forms hold is not limited to any particular time or place. Like the other arts, music is able to transcend the arbitrary boundaries that humans devise to separate themselves from others.

In a rare U.S. appearance, the widely regarded master of traditional Persian singing and one of Iran’s most acclaimed vocalists and composers, Mohammad Reza Shajarian, will perform in New York City on June 5, 2008.

As the inventor of the escopetarra—rifles transformed into guitars—Cesar Lopez breathes life into instruments of death. In response to the violence that has plagued his home in Bogota, Colombia, Lopez has discovered a way to channel this violence into "art, where creation triumphs over destruction."

We often engage with musical practices as strategies of resistance that may be cathartic, communicative, and subversive. The Sound of Resistance endeavers to be an ever growing encyclopedia of the traditions of musical development and resistance in countries throughout the world.

Cultures of Resistance teamed up with Hich Kas to produce this track and video to expose some of the diversity of Iranian culture not shown in western media and to invite people to take another look at Iran and its people.