{"id":4752,"date":"2016-08-23T17:30:04","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T22:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=4752"},"modified":"2016-08-23T17:30:04","modified_gmt":"2016-08-23T22:30:04","slug":"culture-here-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/08\/23\/culture-here-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Culture Here & There"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cultural struggles in Iran have analogies in the United States – but are far more sharply delineated, due to the overtly religious nature of the country. Take this report <\/a>by Rohollah Faghihi in AL Monitor<\/b><\/i>:<\/p>\n

Hard-liners say [President Rouhani’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali] Jannati is crossing the red lines of the 1979 Islamic Revolution\u2019s values, while Reformists charge that he is retreating in the face of criticism and attacks by conservatives.<\/p>\n

During the past decade, concerts have rarely made waves, but ever since Rouhani took office, concert organizers have repeatedly faced obstruction and consequent\u00a0cancellation.<\/p>\n

To avoid concert cancellations, which damage\u00a0Rouhani\u2019s approval ratings, the administration has issued a circular to prevent other state bodies such as the judiciary and the police from calling them off. The circular states that the police isn\u2019t allowed to stop concerts<\/a>.\u00a0Jannati has said that based on the new law, singers shall\u00a0request permission<\/a> to hold a concert from the Ministry of Culture, while the police is only to deal with traffic<\/a> around the venue. In response, the deputy head of Iran\u2019s armed forces, Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, ordered the police to continue \u201cdealing with ethical and misbehavior anomalies in places, including concert venues<\/a>.\u201d …<\/p>\n

The judiciary and police in the province have recently stopped planned concerts by acclaimed traditional singers<\/a> such as Shahram Nazeri<\/a> and Salar Aghili<\/a>. Explaining\u00a0the cancellation of Aghili\u2019s concert, Khorasan Razavi’s General Prosecutor\u00a0Gholam-Ali Sadeghi said, \u201cThere were some problems regarding the content\u00a0and performance of concerts<\/a>, as well as the outfits of the audience. \u2026 This led to different classes of people [such as] seminarians and senior clerics complaining to the prosecutor\u2019s office about concert performances in the religious capital of Iran.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The hardliners may even be upsetting the notoriously conservative Supreme Leader Khamenei:<\/p>\n

” … Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei is an artist, poet, musicologist and scholar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The supreme leader has in the past expressed his views on music and concerts<\/a>. In a notable speech two decades ago, he said, \u201cThe music in our region hasn\u2019t been used for higher goals, which is in contrast to the path of music in Europe. You know that I am naturally anti-Western. Nothing in the West\u00a0fascinates me. At the same time, I approve of the positive characteristics of the West. One of those attributes is music. \u2026 Informative and meaningful music has long existed there. \u2026 In the West, sometimes a nation has been saved by music<\/a>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Properly abstracted, it’s battles over power cloaked in religion.<\/p>\n

Reminds me of the history of the Vatican.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cultural struggles in Iran have analogies in the United States – but are far more sharply delineated, due to the overtly religious nature of the country. Take this report by Rohollah Faghihi in AL Monitor: Hard-liners say [President Rouhani’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Ali] Jannati is crossing \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4753,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4752\/revisions\/4753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}