What does the omission of a single line in the cover of an old song tell us about power, language, and identity?
In 1921, the armed forces backed by the Iranian central government gunned down Colonel Pessian, the popular head of Gendarmerie in the province of Khorasan who had risen up against the prime minister, Ahmad Qavam. Soon after, Aref Qazvini, a hugely celebrated Iranian lyricist and musician, commemorated Colonel’s death in a ballad, Gerye Kon (Do Cry!). A couple of years later, Qamar Vaziri, the legendary Iranian singer, sang the ballad in a concert on the Grand Hotel’s stage in Tehran. Her performance is believed to be the first appearance of an Iranian female singer without the hejab on a public stage, singing in front of a mixed audience. Fast forward to almost a century later and Gisoo Shakeri, a singer self-identifying as a feminist activist in exile, recorded a cover of the song in her 2008 album “Gisoo Sings Qamar”. Produced and distributed outside Iran, the album is a tribute to Qamar’s socially and politically responsible art.
“Do Cry!” is one of the most well-known songs in the history of Persian music and has been performed, since Qamar, by many singers of different calibers — famous or less so . A few lines in the middle of the ballad read:
The heart cannot run away from this grief. [del ze dast-e qam mafar nadārad.]
All that the eyes can offer is a pour of tears; [dīde qeyr-e ašk-e tar nadārad;]
And it’s not only limited to Muharram and Safar! [īn moharram o safar nadārad.]
During a 40-day period, starting in the month of Muharram and concluding in Safar, Imam Hussein’s martyrdom is grieved annually throughout Shi’a-majority Iran. The last verse above, therefore, involves a hyperbole, a rhetorical device, to convey the graveness of Colonel’s death: while grieving for the third Shi’a Imam may end after the 40 days in Safar, the tears shed for this occasion will not be brought to a close at the end of the mourning period; we will grieve Colonel Pessian’s death forever.
Although Qamar, in the available recordings of the song, naturally sings all the words and verses of the ballad, Shakeri in her cover excludes that last line above containing words Muharram and Safar. To keep the melody intact, she instead repeats the previous line twice.
But why does Shakeri not sing that one verse? There is only one reason I can think of as to why she does not include that particular line in her cover: the allusion to a religiously significant event, even if it is part of a figure of speech, does not fit the singer’s secular ideology. Censoring out the verse, Shakeri therefore “cleanses” the lyrics from any religiously-charged words, so the language reflects her views — probably that she disdains religion or perhaps its influence on arts.
Deborah Cameron famously coined the term “verbal hygiene” in a book of the same title and defined it as “motley collection of discourses and practices through which people attempt to ‘clean up’ language and make its structure or its use conform more closely to their ideals of beauty, truth, efficiency, logic, correctness, and civility” (Cameron, 1995:vii).
The specific verbal hygiene Shakeri engages with in her cover suggests that in her secular and seemingly egalitarian and progressive view, there are still forms of censorship in arts and literature that are justifiably admissible. In her view, particular values can and must be symbolically upheld by barring certain words of others and purifying their language.
Although I have a more or less firm opinion about this specific purification of language, my point, at least here, is not whether these practices of verbal hygiene are good or bad. There are arguments and counterarguments to back each of the two sides, if one is to make a value judgement: “It’s immoral to engage in any act of censorship;” “True, but it’s also far from honesty and therefore is unethical, if an artist utters words she doesn’t believe in;” “Maybe, but she shouldn’t have politicized the language and art of others;” “Yes, but this particular work of art has already been a political statement and its creates were political activists of sorts;” “True, but their verbal and musical art engages with politics at a serious level; they don’t address the question of power by a pitiful attempt to censor out a figure of speech, only because it is associated with a religious event;” etc.
Beyond making a value judgment, the point here, though, is that these practices of verbal hygiene are important to take note of, because they indicate something more significant.
First, this practice of verbal hygiene does not take place in a socio-political and historical vacuum. As such, it alludes to facts about social groups and their struggles over power in a specific context. This instance of verbal hygiene particularly shows that a group’s attempt to gain a public voice is not a straightforward endeavor to open up an equal space among multiple already-existing voices.
The inclusion of one voice (e.g., that of Shakeri and what it represents) may come together with the exclusion of the whole or parts of other voices (e.g., those of Aref and Qamar and what they represent) whose language, according to the first group, has no place in the public sphere and whose words must be omitted.
Secondly, Shakeri’s act of language purification also indicates an irony, speaking to the contradictions of struggles over power in the society. In addition to being artists, Aref, Qamar, and Shakeri, all have one thing in common: they all seemed to care for democratic values, in general, and women’s rights, in particular. In spite of their generational differences, there seems to exist a strong affinity between them. Aref was a true freedom fighter who helped the Constitutional Revolution with his art. In several of his poems, he also appears to be a champion for women’s rights and education (e.g., the ghazal titled “Civilization without Women’s Education [Is Only] a Half-traveled, Incomplete Journey” [tamaddon bī tarbīyat-e nesvān — safar-e nīme-rāh]). Qamar, as I mentioned earlier, appeared without the veil on stage and performed for an audience that included men — a radical move in its time for which police summoned her and forced her commit to not singing in public without the veil again. This is perhaps one reason Shakeri, who self-identifies as a feminist, thinks of Qamar as a role model of sorts.
The irony is Shakeri, a feminist artist, censors out the words of two other artists — Aref, a freedom fighter and women’s rights champion, and Qamar, a pioneer and a role model, despite their seeming affinity in viewpoint. Shakeri’s practice of verbal hygiene, therefore, shows that struggles over power are not restricted to those between opposite social forces. They also happen between those whose viewpoints seem similar.
Thirdly, there is one final reason I believe verbal hygiene is important to study. In addition to indicating facts about the socio-political and historical backdrop against which these practices take place and likewise revealing the contradictions of struggles over power, they also usually point out an important fact about language: language does not simply represent the identity of those using it. Language, moreover, contributes to the creation of those identities.
That particular line of the ballad is not simply excluded from the song so the singer’s identity can be reflected more accurately in her work of art. Its omission, in fact, contributes to the creation of her identity as it defines Shakeri in contrast to anything that is in any shape or form related to religion — even if it is a figure of speech or a rhetorical device.
Cameron, D. (1995). Verbal Hygiene. London & New York: Routledge.
Originally published here.