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N0KFQ > TODAY 19.12.13 18:09l 52 Lines 2485 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Dec 18
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Sent: 131219/1655Z 8907@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.57
Dec 19, 2005:
Ahmadinejad bans all Western music in Iranian state television
and radio broadcasts
The first known pronouncement by a public figure regarding the
potential of popular music to act as a socially destabilizing
force comes from the first century B.C., when none other than the
great philosopher Plato wrote, "When the mode of the music
changes, the walls of the city shake." Many similar
pronouncements have followed in the 2000 years since, with
defenders of the status quo labeling musicians as diverse as Igor
Stravinsky, Elvis Presley and Ice-T as dangers to society. On
this day in 2005, in one fell swoop, newly elected Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put that label on those musicians
and many more when he announced a total ban on Western music on
state-run television and radio in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The announcement of the ban was entirely in keeping with the
antipathy to Western culture that President Ahmadinejad had
previously shown as the mayor of Tehran. While in that office in
2003, for instance, Ahmadinejad had issued a ban on all outdoor
advertisements featuring international soccer star David Beckham.
In truth, however, the ban on Western music was simply a
restatement of a longstanding official policy first put in place
in Iran following the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In banning all
music except that with an explicitly religious theme, Iranian
leader Ayatollah Khomeini had remarked at that time that "Music
dulls the mind because it involves pleasure and ecstasy, similar
to drugs. It destroys our youth who become poisoned by it."
In the decades following the revolution but prior to the election
of Ahmadinejad, tolerance for Western music had increased to the
point that the works of certain Western musicians_George Michael,
Eric Clapton, The Eagles and Kenny G. in particular, according to
the BBC_had become relatively common on Iranian state television.
The ban announced by President Ahmadinejad put an end to that
practice, but predictably did little to stamp out enthusiasm for
Western music in a nation where 70 percent of the population was
younger than 30 as of 2008. As reported in Time magazine and The
San Francisco Chronicle that same year, underground scenes
devoted to homegrown, Western-style pop, rock and hip-hop
continue to thrive in the Iranian capital despite the ban
announced on this day in 2005.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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