There are some types of publicity you can’t buy, and others you most certainly wouldn’t want to. For Googoosh, an Iranian pop colossus of several decades’ standing, authorities’ brutal response to the last few weeks of multifaceted protests across her home country coincides unhappily with the publication of her memoir, A Sinful Voice – a tale which pivots around her imprisonment, and the theocratic torpedoing of her career, after Iran’s 1979 revolution.
Now aged 75, Googoosh – real name Faegheh Atashin – still plays to large crowds of Iranian diasporans in places such as her adopted home of Los Angeles, but has pledged only to take the stage again once “[her] country is rescued”. Since then, she’s penned a letter (on Googoosh-headed notepaper) to President Trump beseeching him to “stand unwaveringly with the Iranian people,” and whether doing so primarily in hope or expectation, it’s reasonable to suppose this national icon’s own history would feed into the pain she feels.
Thanks to a hustling showbiz father, Googoosh was performing in nightclubs from the early 1950s, almost as soon as she could walk. Her teenage years find her straddling the domestic pop music and acting worlds, fending off her bullying stepmother, and entering into the first of her four marriages. An effort to crack the French pop market in the early 70s is a less than qualified success, but speaks to the cosmopolitan outlook that anyone with sufficient finances could enjoy in then-liberal Iran. On this topic, Googoosh paints a vivid picture: properties dealt, hotel bills racked up, LSD and cocaine enthusiastically ingested.
All of which serves to underline the night-and-day status of Iran, before and after its Islamic Revolution under the yoke of Ayatollah Khomeini. Not only did Googoosh’s status not protect her, it meant she was targeted for persecution under a new doctrine that held music, and female artistic expression in general, as morally unclean. As a result, she’s carted off to jail and interrogated by mirthless clerics, alongside a clutch of her Iranian entertainment peers. It could be the premise of a comedy sketch, but it was certainly serious business at the time.
Released from prison but forbidden to sing, for Googoosh the 1980s prove arduous – living humbly in Tehran, fearful of military assaults by Saddam’s Iraq and emotionally racked by the death of her father. Slowly, though, hints of the pre-1979 Iran are appearing in the nation’s public demeanour. The author visits a recording studio to exercise her famous voice, after more than a decade silent; the 1998 World Cup match in which Iran beat the United States, sparking massed street celebrations, feels like a cultural watershed moment in Googoosh’s eyes. Two years later, stung by another bout of official harassment, she boards a plane to Canada under semi-legal circumstances and, beginning with a triumphant comeback concert in Toronto, embarks on a life in North America that’s endured for a quarter-century so far.
It’s a story most unlike one any Western pop star could tell, and A Sinful Voice will surely be eye-opening for many who encounter it – this reviewer included. Co-writer Tara Dehlavi (daughter of an old friend, says Googoosh) ensures an accessible read, though a tolerance of clichéd phrasing will be needed for enjoyment, and much of the dialogue has the breathless cadence of speech bubbles in 1970s teen comics.
