Description
Book SynopsisFarzaneh Hemmasi draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Los Angeles and musical and textual analysis to examine how the pop music, music videos, and television made by Iranian expatriates express modes of Iranianness not possible in Iran.
Trade Review“In this important book Farzaneh Hemmasi offers a novel reading of Iranian exilic pop music, raising insightful conceptual questions about the notion and significance of pop culture and diasporic imagination. By taking pop music seriously, she opens up a space for conversations about transnational networks of artistic production, the construction of nationhood and nationalism, and the politics of identity.” -- Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, author of * Foucault in Iran: Islamic Revolution after the Enlightenment *
“
Tehrangeles Dreaming deftly analyzes what circulates and translates around and across this most complex and refractive of diasporic spaces. It is a subtle book, a model of how to weave popular music and dance into a field still largely dominated by film and literature. And a real pleasure to read. That
shesh-o-hasht groove can be felt on every page.” -- Martin Stokes, author of * The Republic of Love: Cultural Intimacy in Turkish Popular Music *
“Farzaneh Hemmasi’s book is a deft and insightful analysis of Tehrangeles, viewed as a geography, a music scene, a pop industry, a transnational cultural production field, and a post-revolutionary diasporic cultural formation…. Conceptually rich, theoretically nuanced, with its lucid demonstrations of the mobilization of affect, Hemmasi’s
Tehrangeles Dreaming makes a valuable contribution to a wide range of scholarship.” -- Mehdi Semati * Cultural Studies *
“
Tehrangeles Dreaming offers a compellingly argued and accessibly written ethnography of exile, cultural production, and the politics of identity in the Iranian context. It no doubt will be useful for those in ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural studies, and Middle East Studies...”
-- Amy Malek * International Journal of Middle East Studies *
“[
Tehrangeles Dreaming] is an invaluable contribution to the study of Iranian popular culture.... Hemmasi is a truly powerful narrator in her ethnographic work and she provides a profoundly deep and pointed analysis....”
-- Siavash Rokni * Lateral *
“[
Tehrangeles Dreaming] is particularly interesting when it discusses the impact of Tehrangeles pop on Iranians within, in political, social and moral terms.... The writing is engaging, filled with stories about fieldwork and encounters.” -- Laetitia Nanquette * Abstracta Iranica *
“
Tehrangeles Dreaming makes significant contributions to the scholarship on both American musical multiculturalism and the music of the Islamic world. . . . Farzaneh Hemmesi is to be commended for her clear and captivating first book.” -- Anna K. Rasmussen * Journal of Anthropological Research *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. The Capital of 6/8 38
2. Iranian Popular Music and History: Views from Tehrangeles 67
3. Expatriate Erotics, Homeland Moralities 98
4. Iran as a Singing Woman 122
5. A Nation in Recovery 153
Conclusion: Forty Years 186
Notes 201
References 223
Index 235
