Woman Life Freedom - Music For Iran - Volume 4
- 10 hours ago
- 6 min read
Words by Beth Jones
In celebration of Nowruz, the holiday of renewal, marking the first day of spring and new beginnings. We bring forward a review of Woman Life Freedom - Music for Iran - Volume 4 to bring a little bit of prosperity into your new year.
"An artist, if he's unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest…opening his mouth is always scandalous."- Pier Paolo Pasolini
It is so tiring to say it that I almost don’t want to, but I know for the sake of structure it is a point I must make. We are living through a time of intense political impotence. If the artist is defined by their capacity to disrupt, then the question of what that disruption looks like now feels increasingly unclear. It can feel maddeningly impossible to know what we as individuals can do in the face of global atrocity; it is easy to feel we are failing, paralysed as political agents: I am overdue on my debts to the world, and I do not know how to meaningfully make anything better.
It is precisely this paralysis that David Wojnarowicz, the artist, musician and AIDS activist of the 1980s East Village scene, writes against. Reflecting on what artists owe the world, he argued "the work that anybody does as an artist- if it doesn't reflect resistance, then they're helping a system of control become more perfect." In this framing, art does not become political only when it names a cause, but in what it allows to pass unquestioned. Art is political not just in content, but in participation. Silence, too, is a form of participation, the helping of a system of control to become more perfect.
This understanding of the artist as an oppositional figure once felt less contentious than it does now. Today, musicians are increasingly required to state the obvious: that music is political, whether it intends to be or not. As CMAT recently publicly noted “you don’t get to make art in a fascist state.” Protest music, once a more public and collective language, now seems relegated to the edges, appearing in fragments rather than holding any stable place in the centre of culture.
It is within this context- of paralysis, of insistence, of reasserted responsibility- that Music for Iran, Volume 4 arrives, not as a didactic or overtly programmatic body of work, but as a statement of political alignment. The twenty-six-track compilation brings together artists across scenes and sensibilities, all contributing work in support of the Iranian grassroots organisation Free Them Now, which campaigns for the release of political prisoners, supports displaced families, and aids those forced to flee the country. The music is not subject-specific; the act of protest is in putting your name and work towards the project, in raising the funds. It is an answer to what is required of us as artists, what to do when you feel impotent in the face of political realities. It insists that art is not separate from the conditions in which it is made.
Music for Iran was initiated in 2022 by Katja Rackin, UK-based Iranian musician and member of Holiday Ghosts, in the wake of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Four years on, the urgency has intensified: “ We started… as people protested for their basic human rights against the Islamic Regime of Iran - and now in 2026, in the midst of war, our fight for a free Iran must stand firm against US/Israel intervention whilst continuing to raise awareness of the regimes on-going crimes against humanity”. The compilation exists not to narrate events directly, but to mobilise attention and material support, to turn listening into a form of participation.
The album itself is eclectic, thriving on its dissonance and range. There is an anthemic, slightly Velvet Underground cover of She Goes She Goes from Sweeping Promises ft. Kathleen Hanna, Stella Mozgawa & Frank Figueroa, Anatolian psychedelic soul from Derya Yıldırım and Grup Şimşek, Vehicle’s Softspots, which sounds a bit like something off Tranquillity Base Hotel & Casino with vocals coming from somewhere in the next room. Elsewhere, Craker’s Whataboutism veers into proggy, nutty synth territory and Holiday Ghosts’ State Lines exhibits the part of the album following most closely in the traditional lineage of protest music (“I’m searching for outrage in a culture of silence”).
The album also features psych-pop from Ubiquitous Meh! And Height Keech, featuring a loose and brilliant use of a tambourine and Get Down Service’s track Special Cups which for some reason reminds me of 2001 Space Odyssey but with deadpan lyrical contortions (“I don’t have a problem with dry stone walls but they stopped being the answer to a problem about four hundred years ago/ I just simply don’t care”).
One of the standouts, Ceann Capaill’s Shame, recorded live at the Green Door Store, unfolds as a crescendoing wash of ambient noise and unexpected changes, held together by beautiful, folk vocals amidst the tumult. It captures something essential about the compilation as a whole, a push-pull between chaos and care, laxity and intention.
If there is a theme to the album, it is that each of these songs contain a sense of that chaos; there is a looseness at its core. The compilation feels less like a singular statement than a cross-section: a snapshot of disparate scenes, artists, and impulses, all briefly aligned toward a shared purpose. It is four-in-the-morning music for a series of twenty-six completely different mornings.
That shared purpose is not abstract. As Katja notes, there is often a gap between witnessing and action, a desire to help that remains unresolved and impotent: “We so often see horrors around us and want to be able to do something to help and connect with those that are suffering, no matter where on the globe they are. This is something that felt very apparent when I was reaching out to artists to contribute to the compilation. The overwhelming support and feedback from everyone was very moving and further stressed the point that people so often want to help but don’t know how.”
Music for Iran attempts to close that gap, however partially, by offering a structure through which artists and listeners alike can contribute. If you find yourself questioning what you can do, buying the album on Bandcamp is one form of engagement; showing up to fundraisers, participating in cultural events, and supporting boycotts of industry institutions tied to military sponsorship are others. We can leverage art for the things we care about; we can insist on control over who reaps the benefits from our creation and consumption of music. The tools are already ours; this is one small way of putting them to use.
Statement from the organisers of Music for Iran
Iranian people have been fighting against the brutal dictatorship of the Islamic Regime of Iran for 47 years, and now as the US and Israel wage war under the pretence of liberation, it is the people who are caught in the middle. It is more important than ever that we centre the voices of Iranian people, and make sure that whilst we fight to stop the bombs, we also continue to hold the regime accountable for its crimes against humanity.
When we say no to war, when we say ‘hands off Iran’, that demand cannot stop at foreign governments, it must also be directed at the regime itself. Multiple evils can and do co-exist. We need to see the regime's January massacre (where thousands of protesters were killed by regime forces) as an act of warfare against the people of Iran and recognise that Iranians are being bombed from the outside and simultaneously killed by their own government from within.
Music For Iran aims to amplify Iranian voices and stand with them against all forms of tyranny, against all forms of state violence.
Our fight is for a free Iran – we denounce the regime, we denounce the return of monarchy, we denounce state agendas infiltrating the revolution. Our hope is in the people of Iran that have been organising, protesting and planning for the overthrow of the Islamic Regime Of Iran since its beginning. Our hope is for an end to the war and a self-determined future for the people of Iran.
Music For Iran – Volume 4 Tracklist
1. Deerhoof – Kids Are So Small (live) 02:00
2. U.C.D – Wageless Life 02:45
3. Ubiquitous Meh! and Height Keech – All Time Greatest Best In History 02:48
4. The Heavenly Bodes – Sea Water 04:31
5. White Fence – I Am A Carnation 02:10
6. Jeffrey Lewis – Put One Foot In Front Of The Other 03:39
7. Pachyman – #344 03:16
8. Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek – Yakamoz (live in Istanbul) 03:58
9. Tom Sutton – I’ll Be Your Constant 03:17
10. Sweeping Promises ft. Kathleen Hanna, Stella Mozgawa & Frank Figueroa – She Goes She Goes (The Clean Cover) 03:12
11. Low Harness – Housewife 03:53
12. A Place To Bury Strangers – Put It All On The Line 03:53
13. Xanax – Sustenance 01:49
14. Loraine – Ache 01:56
15. Craker – Whataboutism 02:35
16. Crack Cloud – Not The Same Thing 01:33
17. Get Down Services – Special Cups 03:21
18. Tramhaus – Past Me (Live at Reimei Sessions) 04:13
19. Mary Lattimore – Sitting By The Lake With Jack and Cristie 03:20
20. Vehicle – Softspots (Bleach Demo) 03:27
21. Ceann Capaill – Shame (Live at Green Door Store) 05:21
22. Mike Donovan – Hoz (Acoustic) 02:51
23. My Precious Bunny – French Navy (MPB Cover) 04:20
24. Kavus Torabi – Untethered 04:24
25. Chloe Bonfield – Child Among The Weeds 06:00
26. Holiday Ghosts – State Lines 03:44
The songs contributed by these artists can only be found on bandcamp
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