Musical Diversity and Discursive Unity: Projections of Ethnic and National Identities onto Regional and Classical Musics in Iran

“This radif that you acquire, is actually the collection, an encyclopedia, of melodies and motives of various local musics through the country.” During ten years of Iranian classical repertoire education known as radif, my mentors used to remind me of the regional roots of each piece and assert the organic relationship between national classical music and local folk musics. Classical-regional music dichotomy is an omnipresent classification of the music in Iran, representing the notions of nationality and ethnicity, respectively. This paper aims to study how the dynamics between nationality and ethnicity in Iran have been reflected in the relationships between classical and regional music. I draw on Maria Sonevytsky’s (2022) and Tanya Merchant’s (2014) study of evolutionism in the former Soviet Union and Rasmus Elling’s study (2015) of the minorities in Iran. Focusing on the mostly Iranian musicologists’ and musicians’ published articles, essays, and interviews as well as my experience in the field as a student of Iranian classical music at the University of Tehran, I argue that the prevalent discourse has conflated the sociopolitical notion of Unity in Diversity with the previously established hierarchical mindset in music such that it resulted in the delineation of a hierarchical order of musical systems. I hope to show how the devastating implications of evolutionism can breach contemporary conceptualizations.