Baraye

In September 2022, shortly after the widespread protests in Iran in response to the state murder of Jina-Mahsa Amini, an intriguing phenomenon emerged on Persian Twitter. Tens of thousands of Iranian users, mostly within the country, tweeted their motivations for participating in the anti-regime protests using the hashtag baraye, which means “because of” or “for.” These tweets featured short, simple, and heartfelt reasons such as “for dancing on the streets,” “for the future generation,” “for being poor and embarrassed,”, “for a normal life,” and “for the polluted air.”

The idea of sharing one’s reason for joining the movement was well received and the hashtag baraye became a Twitter trend for several days. Many users compiled these tweets, but only one person made a song out of them.

On September 28 th , Shervin Hajipour a relatively unknown singer from Babolsar, a city in Northern Iran, released a video clip on his Instagram page where he sang his newly composed and recorded song baraye from his bedroom. A song whose lyrics were based on several cleverly selected tweets posted by Iranian youth or “written by people,” as Shervin puts it. The song ended with baray zan, zendegi, azaadi (for Woman Life Freedom) a phrase that resonated with the sound of Jian’s uprising. This phrase repeated in a fadeout, with the final phrase being baraye azaadi (For Freedom) which was especially captivating among fans and provoked deep emotions among Iranians, particularly in diaspora.

baraye immediately went viral and was played 40 million times in less than 48 hours. Two days later, following Shervin’s arrest, the song was taken down from his Instagram page. However, this did not stop the song’s circulation. On the contrary, in the months that followed the release of Shervin from prison, the song has been played, sung and heard by millions more all over the world and has been translated into other languages and even made history by winning the first-ever Grammy Award in the newly created category, “The Best Song for Social Change” on February 5, 2023. The Grammy award owes in part to an online campaign on TikTok and Instagram in October 2022, which urged users to nominate the song for the award and received
overwhelming support (83% of the total submissions). baraye has been played as a background music for numerous video clips made on the current uprising in Iran. Often has been sung by hundreds of thousands of Iranians in protests organized around the world. It has been translated and performed in English, French, and Italian and sung by a wide spectrum of people, by political prisons in Iran or by the French Senate and classrooms in Hamburg, Germany. It has been played on stage by Coldplay in Argentina and by street artists in New York subways.

It is arguable whether baraye is the unofficial anthem of Jina’s uprising, as western media often suggests, simply because so many marginalized and national minority groups in Iran do not necessarily identify with it as strongly as urban middle-class group. Baraye has also been critiqued for its deeply liberal ethos of social transformation. Nevertheless, it certainly holds a
significant place as a protest song produced inside Iran. It has crossed borders and helped draw the world’s attention to Jina’s uprising.

For a translation of baraye see Zuzanna Olszewska “An Anthem from the Iranian Protests,”
Middle East Report Online, October 04, 2022 (https://merip.org/2022/10/an-anthem-from-the-
iranian-protests/).