Nahid Hematabadi, a renowned Iranian opera singer, has written a tragic account of the death of art and music in Iran after fundamentalist clerics hijacked a people’s revolution in 1979.
She looks back at her childhood where she in the early 1950s I began learning the violin. After studying music and singing for Tehran Music Academy, she performed as a soloist for Iran’s State Opera in numerous events. Yet, now she is leaving in exile in Europe and laments what has happened to her homeland under the mullahs of Tehran. She writes that all the artists who refused to succumb to fundamentalists’ restrictions faced all types of crackdowns, deprivations, and purges. Many were thrown into such poverty that they were only able to make a living as street vendors. Others were thrown behind bars. Various writers and poets who refused to back down from their beliefs were murdered.
