Googoosh plays at Scotiabank Area on Jan. 17, 2025, in Toronto. Jeremy Chan Images/Getty Photographs
Ahead of Beyoncé, ahead of Cher, ahead of Madonna, there was once Googoosh.
The 75-year-old Iranian superstar catapulted to stardom in Iran all the way through the Nineteen Seventies, simplest to be silenced by way of the Islamist regime that took energy after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 2000, she was once after all allowed to depart Iran to are living in exile.
For Iranians – in particular the ones within the diaspora – Googoosh symbolizes an generation of cosmopolitanism in late-Pahlavi Iran, the duration from the mid-Fifties till 1979 when Iran’s common tune, cinema, tv and type embraced modernity and wondered social norms.
However as protests roil Iran and the country’s clerical leaders in finding their grip on energy slipping, the “Voice of Iran,” as Googoosh is understood, hasn’t became up the amount. As a substitute, she’s discovered herself placing her farewell excursion on pause.
“Everyone is waiting for my last concert in LA,” Googoosh informed journalists in December 2025, “but … I am not going to sing until my country is rescued.”
Googoosh’s refusal to sing isn’t an indication of hesitation however a mindful political gesture – one that pulls its pressure from her singular place in Iran’s cultural historical past.
Over the last a number of years, I’ve studied Googoosh’s trajectory as a musical and cultural icon. For Iranians outside and inside the rustic, she’s been a canvas onto which they’ve projected nostalgia for pre-revolutionary Iran, recollections of rupture and loss, and fantasies of resistance.
A celebrity is born
Born Faegheh Atashin in 1950, Googoosh was once raised in Tehran by way of Muslim Azeri folks who had fled Soviet Azerbaijan. Even though civil government registered her underneath the Perso-Arabic identify Faegheh, her level identify, “Googoosh” – in fact a male Armenian identify – continued.
She grew up onstage and onscreen. Her father, an acrobat, included her into his act when she was once simply 3 years previous; by way of the age of four, she was once the circle of relatives’s number one breadwinner.
As she matured, Googoosh moved throughout tune, cinema, type and dance, emerging to prominence inside of a cultural panorama formed by way of Western influences and aligned with the state’s modernizing ambitions. Via the mid-Nineteen Seventies, she had turn into probably the most recognizable determine of Iran’s pre-revolutionary pop culture.
In line with Iranian research student Abbas Milani, Googoosh “embodied the frivolous joys, the reckless abandon, the exuberant era of social experimentation, the defiant desire to debunk tradition and its taboos, and the vigor and vitality of youth.”
Onscreen, she wore the latest types and cuts. Younger Iranians copied her hair and hemlines. She danced, posed and sang like a world big name – along Persian, she recorded in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and Turkish – and, within the procedure, redefined what a feminine pop big name may just appear to be in Iran.
Exiled from the level
But to a couple Islamist critics of the Pahlavi order, she symbolized “gharbzadegi,” sometimes called “Westoxication” – the conclusion that by way of embracing the West, Iranians had been betraying the traditions in their folks and bringing about ethical decay.
Within the yr previous the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Googoosh had a residency at a Los Angeles membership. But whilst many artists fled Iran within the wake of the revolution to rebuild their careers, Googoosh returned, simplest to be impulsively punished for her previous.
Government charged her in 1979 with “moral corruption.” A few years later, the brand new regime in short incarcerated her, confiscated her passport and prohibited her from publicly acting.
Similar to that, a central determine within the country’s cultural existence was once got rid of from the highlight. It could be 21 years ahead of she would carry out once more.
Googoosh wasn’t on my own; musicians and performers around the nation encountered the similar destiny: Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s ideal chief from 1979 to 1989, noticed tune as a vice. The regime additionally categorically prohibited ladies from acting solo in public.
Googoosh plays ‘Hejrat,’ one among her ultimate giant hits ahead of the autumn of the shah.
In December 2025, she revealed her memoir, “Googoosh: A Sinful Voice.” In it, she opens up about this era of her existence – and her resolution to go back to Iran.
Even if she was once on the peak of her popularity within the late-Nineteen Seventies, she alleges that her managers had misappropriated her profits. As progressive unrest intensified and the Pahlavi regime imposed martial legislation and closed cabarets and theaters in an try to appease conservatives, her resources of source of revenue vanished. This brought on the transfer to Los Angeles. However mounting debt and substance abuse problems influenced her resolution to go back house.
She writes that progressive hostility wasn’t merely directed at pop culture; it went after excitement itself, in particular when embraced, celebrated or expressed by way of ladies. To the Islamic Republic, tune was once now not a type of artwork or a vocation; it was once a provocation and an ethical abomination.
Googoosh, who’d been a training Shiite Muslim who prayed, fasted and went on pilgrimage, describes the surprise she felt that such a lot cruelty may just coexist with claims of non secular piety following the Islamic Revolution. Non-public religion and public, secular performances had now not been noticed as contradictions in pre-revolutionary Iran.
That each one modified in 1979.
Iranian tradition in exile
The revolution catalyzed a mass cultural exodus: Thousands and thousands of Iranians fled the rustic, with many settling in California, the place different common singers akin to Hayedeh, Mahasti and Homeyra rebuilt their careers in exile.
A topic of Zan-e Rooz mag, which interprets to ‘Women of Today,’ options, from left, Googoosh, Mahasti and Ramesh, 3 of Iran’s greatest pop stars within the Nineteen Seventies.
ramesh._music/Instagram
A proxy Iranian leisure trade emerged in Los Angeles, permitting Iranian pop culture to continue to exist outdoor the Islamic Republic. In what got here to be known as “Tehrangeles,” studios recorded Persian-language tune and tv, whilst marketers opened cabaret-style efficiency venues.
The leisure infrastructure inbuilt Tehrangeles later expanded to Europe, Canada and the Persian Gulf; a lot of the programming was once saturated with motifs of reminiscence, longing and nostalgia.
In the meantime, Googoosh’s 20 years off the level had simplest amplified her mystique. When she after all won permission to depart Iran in 2000, she carried out her first live performance at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre ahead of a sold-out crowd.
Since then, she’s recorded 9 albums. But maximum of her enthusiasts have proven restricted hobby in those more recent choices. When she sings them, chants of “Ghadimi! Ghadimi!” (“Old! Old!”) steadily upward push from the gang.
Like many within the diaspora, they flip to Googoosh to not interact the existing however to move themselves to an previous generation – successfully freezing her, and their recollections of Iran, previously.
Silence reclaimed
As soon as silenced by way of the Islamic Republic, Googoosh now voluntarily withholds her voice in unity.
I see this refusal as a reclamation of her company; with Iran once more roiled by way of mass mobilization and protest, her silence resonates as loudly as her songs as soon as did.
If Googoosh has lengthy functioned as a vessel for collective reminiscence, she now stands as a reminder that reminiscence on my own isn’t sufficient – that nostalgia can’t stand in for a political reckoning, and that voices formed by way of exile stay tethered to unfinished struggles at house.
Googoosh plays her observe “Pishkesh” within the mid-Nineteen Seventies.
Richard Nedjat-Haiem does now not paintings for, seek the advice of, personal stocks in or obtain investment from any corporate or group that may have the benefit of this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their instructional appointment.
