From Sad Eastern to Angry Eastern: Emotions, Identity, and Heroines in Persian Protest Rap

Persian rap has been one of the main channels of vocalizing the hardships of Iranians in the last two decades. Marginalized by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the rappers frequently protest the government through their music by expressing a form of dissatisfaction towards the government. The type of articulating this dissatisfaction has abruptly changed by the death of Mahsa (Jina) Amini and the Women, Life, Freedom movement. By implementing a qualitative analysis on a sample of Persian rap songs before and during the movement, this study illustrates the key transformations in the music. Prior to the movement, the songs state the struggles of the Iranians with a sense of sadness and hopelessness and mainly consider allegorical and supernatural entities such as seasons, destiny, the rule of the jungle, or a curse to be responsible for it. On the other hand, during the protests the songs mention the struggles explicitly, point the finger of blame towards government officials and aim to ignite public anger. The sadness accumulated over the years has been turned into anger hungry for action. Further by focusing on representation of womanhood in the songs, this study extracts two co-existing narratives about the role of the women in the movement. One where they are narrated as fragile beings in need of a savior and one where they are at the forefront of the movement.