For Mehdi Yarrahi
Aydin Areta

Víctor Jara was the voice of the Chilean people’s resistance in the darkest years of dictatorship. In the song “Manifesto”, Jara speaks of love, the power of music and the secret of its immortality, in the Persian rendering translated here:

I do not sing for the love of singing,
or because my voice is good.
I sing because my guitar smells of spring.
My song is made of that same ladder
that together we build
to reach the stars.
My song belongs to this earth,
and when the future arrives,
that song will remain forever new
if it is made of courage.

Mehdi Yarrahi is a dignified voice of our people’s resistance and hope. He is an artist who was summoned for protesting against the destruction of Iran’s environment, and who returned to the concert stage wearing a mask in protest at air pollution and sang the song “Khak” [Soil].

Yarrahi embodies the uncompromising empathy of our people. He is the artist who goes on stage wearing the uniform of protesting and imprisoned workers and, only one day after being summoned by the security office of the Music Bureau, released “Pareh Sang”, described here as one of the most political works of Iranian social music in recent years.

He reminds us of the social responsibility of each one of us. From free performances for people living on Tehran’s margins, to engagement in natural disasters, the social sufferings of the people of this land and the shocking political events of recent years—from November 2019 to the Woman–Life–Freedom movement—he has continually stood in the path of truth and on the right side of history.
They banned him from work and transactions and arrested him, but his voice has been released from all the prisons of history.

Fela Kuti, the Nigerian artist and political activist and one of the founders of Afrobeat, who turned his art into a weapon against political repression in Nigeria, is attributed here with the enduring phrase: music is the weapon of the future.

Fela paid a heavy price for singing “Zombie”, addressed to Nigeria’s brutal military, just as Víctor Jara paid the price of his integrity. Yet half a century later they have become immortal, their voices and songs remaining forever fresh and travelling into the future, while Pinochet and Nigeria’s military rulers remained behind the gates of the twenty-first century, on the dark side of history, as lessons for future generations arriving more conscious and more free.

Dear Mehdi, your songs smell of spring and are made of that same ladder by which we will reach the stars.