“Halal” Music Makes a Comeback
Apr 2nd, 2007 by azadeh
Last summer, when Ostad Mohammad-Reza Lotfi — Iran’s most accomplished classical musician and tar master — returned from exile in the West to found a music school, hordes of eager young musicians stood in interminable lines under the Tehran sun, instrument cases tucked under their arms, waiting to take the entrance exam. The opportunity to study with the legendary composer drew star-struck young people from all across the country. Enough women showed up for an all women’s orchestra.
Located on a dilapidated block near Pich-e Shemroon, a central neighborhood that retains the dusty charm of old Tehran, the school occupies the quarters where Lotfi taught before being shut-down by authorities after the 1979 revolution. He returned once in the mid-1990s to re-open the school, but the government promptly cracked down and Lotfi returned to Europe. So, why now, under the tenure of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is Lotfi’s school of music is being tolerated?