Ideas - The power of music in the shadow of Iran

Episode Date: March 12, 2026

One of the strongest ties between the diaspora and home is music. In Iran, music can be politically contentious.In Canada, it connects a community to its past and to its future. Days after the bombings began in Iran, Nahlah Ayed spoke to three Iranian-Canadian musicians and composers about the role of music in a time of uncertainty."Music can be an escape, can be a consolation... Like if we are the stars and galaxies on the planets of the universe, music is like the dark matter of that universe. It's that gravitational force that we know is there but we can't quite put our finger on it." — composer and pianist Iman HabibiGuests in this episode:Tahare Falahati is a Persian traditional singerKaveh Mirhosseini is an Iranian composer and conductorIman Habibi is a composer and pianist

In the fall of 2023, Romana Diedelow, a woman calling herself the Queen of Canada, drove into Richmond, Saskatchewan with a fleet of RVs and set up her kingdom in an abandoned school. So the town banded together to get the cult out by any means necessary. My name is Rachel Brown, and in this season of Uncover, I explore what happens when a conspiracy theory lands in your backyard, The Cult Queen of Canada. Available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. Welcome to Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed.

It has been a tumultuous time for Iranian Canadians. This year began with mass protests against the Iranian government, followed by a violent crackdown, and now U.S. and Israeli strikes. Over the past months, there has been optimism and hope as well as fear and sorrow. So you're completely in the dark. You know things are bad, but you don't know how bad. You don't exactly know what's going on. I feel fear. And I'm so worried about what's going to happen next, what's going to happen to people in Iran. Somehow I feel guilty that I'm here right now.

And my parents, my friends, and my country is underwent. the war. This country is home to one of the largest Iranian diaspora communities in the world. Most came after the revolution in 1979, importing Iranian culture, language, and music. And that kind of thing we need when we imagine a future. So as artists, we can create the world that we want to live in and we can present that to you with our music, with our films, with our visual art. And then that can be the thing that we aspire to. And, and, and then that can be the thing that we aspire to. we move towards. Music in particular is one of the strongest ties between the diaspora and home.

In Iran, music can be politically contentious. In Canada, it connects a community to its past and to its future. I wish I could sing in Tehran, close my eyes, and open from my heart. Days after the bombings began, I spoke with three Iranian musicians. and composers here in Canada about their worries, their hopes, and the role of music at a time of uncertainty. It is so incredibly powerful because it can reach every single agent in the system. Iman Habibi is a multiple award-winning composer and pianist.

He grew up in Tehran and moved to Canada in 2003. He has composed works for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Bach Choir, many others. It's an international language. Music can speak internationally and it doesn't belong to anywhere. Joining Iman is Kaveh Mir Hosseini. From Tehran, he is a composer, conductor and researcher of Iranian folk music. He is currently visiting as a doctoral student at the University of Toronto.

It carries the pain of the people, the history, their poetry, The resilience, music is deeply intertwined with its culture. Tahere Falahati, she is a Persian traditional singer based in North Vancouver. She trained in Tehran before moving to Canada in 2001. Just three days after the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began, all three of them join me for our conversation. Iman, I wanted to begin with you with all that I'm, is happening in Iran right now? How are you feeling today? It's a mix of emotions. Primarily,

what I would say is that my day-to-day life is very much interrupted by what is going on around in the world. I wake up every day and the first thing I think about is checking the news. And that's kind of like a slap in the face. And it affects your whole day. I'm essentially distracted all day, trying to follow what's going on. And you feel survivors guilt, you know, as somebody who lives here, you feel anger when you see the suffering of people. As you said, there's also some hope and optimism in the community. I'm usually an optimistic person, but as of today, I'm not so optimistic. I feel helpless.

There's a feeling of helplessness. Like, we're not doing enough. And then you're trying to do something. You're trying to accomplish something to help. but you end up just overworking yourself and not really accomplishing anything and the work that you're doing is not the work that you should be doing.

My job is really to sit down and write music and I have little capacity and faculty to do that right now with everything else that's going on. And there's also a feeling of shame that you have in the normalcy of your own life. And when you think about the shared history and the shared heritage and culture that you have with the people of Iran

and how they can't have, how their normal life can't go on and it's constantly interrupted. And why is it that my life can be like this? Like, why is it that they're paying that price? And yeah, it's difficult to describe. Obviously, I don't want to be paying that price. I don't want my family to be going through that.

But there's a feeling of shame that comes with that. That already feels hard enough. But I wonder if you could just, speak to just how much harder all of that is not being able to get direct news from what is happening in Iran. It's terrible. It's just the amount of worry that you go through and even the news that comes out is often not reliable because a lot of the news sources that are that are active, I don't trust. So there's a lot of rumor and this is the age of AI and AI is now just good enough as of maybe this year that I can't tell the difference. I really can't tell the difference between what's

real and what's not. And so I used to follow news on social media and Instagram is the only social media, a major social media platform that's not banned in Iran. It wasn't filtered. And so there's a huge community of Iranians there. So we used to follow news on Instagram. Now I can't trust anything that I see there. And so there's very few news sources that I trust and news kind of like trickled through those channels. So you're completely in the dark. You know things are bad, but you're, you don't know how bad, you don't exactly know what's going on. Kaveh, you were in Tehran not very long ago. Yeah.

And it was actually during the protests that happened earlier this year. When you see whatever news is available about what is going on in Iran, what do you feel? What goes through you? It's hard, first of all. As Eamon mentioned, somehow I felt guilty that I'm here right now, and my parents, my friends, and my country is under the war. And I cannot even talk to them. But when I was in Iran, we could feel that something will happen soon. You could sense it.

Yeah, especially on those two days that the governments killed a huge amount of people, we could guess that something will happen soon. And the outcome of this horrific event will be a shame for all of us. Tahre, can you describe how these people, past weeks and months have been for you? I honestly don't even know how to express what I'm feeling right now. I have so many different emotions, very strong ones. On one hand, I feel relief about what happened on Saturday, the Supreme Leader of Iran got killed by Israel. And on the other hand, I feel fear. And I'm so worried about what's going to happen next, what's going to happen to

my people in Iran. I'm worried about the Iran's future and I'm so worried about the transition time. This regime is going to change. But what price will the ordinary people have to pay for this transition and the history shows us that it can be very heavy? So I'm sitting here with mixed emotions, relief, fear, fear, hope, anxiety, all at the same time. I'm honestly. I'm honestly. I'm I'm very worried. Yeah. But I can say about this war that it just started a few days ago. From the very beginning, the regime built its identity on hostility and ideology.

Death to America, death to Israel, death to anyone who disagreed politically, religiously, and socially. For them, ideology comes first. Not the well-being of people in Iran. not its future. Nobody likes war. I hate war like anyone else. But we feel that this moment might weaken the regime enough. So people in Iran, they have a chance to come out and fight for themselves.

Along with the music inspired by traditional Persian sounds, composer Iman Habibi specializes in Western classical music. This piece is called Beloved of the Sky. How does music fit into your coping strategies as you wait for this uncertain situation to resolve itself? Music is so important and can play such a crucial role in every aspect of our lives. Like if we are the stars and galaxies and the planets of the universe, for me, music culture in general art is like the dark matter of that universe. It's like that gravitational force. that we know is there, but we can't quite put our finger on it. We can't quite understand it.

But it's holding the stars and the constellations the way they are. It is so incredibly powerful because it can reach every single agent in the system. It reaches your heart. The slightest change in the formation of that force can change the formation of the constellations. It's really that powerful. But the impact that it has is not immediate impact. It needs to germinate and needs to cultivate. You know, when a composer writes a symphony,

it's like they're planting a seed in the desert. And then somebody else inspired by that action might come and water it. And somebody else will come and take care of the soil. And a filmmaker will be the sunlight. And then give it enough time, give it 200 years, and it'll grow into a beautiful ecosystem. It's very rare that music, that culture, that art can have immediate impact.

Cultural work takes decades, maybe hundreds of years, and multiple people kind of building on each other's work. But the impact that it leaves is lasting impact, and it's the kind of impact that I strive for. But what I was going to say is that once the bombs have dropped, it's a bit too late for me to be doing anything with my music. So there's not that immediacy to the impact. impact that music can make. So that feeling of helplessness, when, you know, every day when I wake up my,

like right now I'm writing a violin concerto. My day-to-day job is to sit down at the piano and with a piece of paper and tell a story or build a world, right? It's an act of storytelling world building. And that kind of thing we need when we imagine a future. So as artists, we can create the world that we want to live in and we can present that to you with our music. with our films, with our visual art. And then that can be the thing that we aspire to and we move towards. But at the time the bombs are dropping, it's too late to do that.

This is Where is Iran from Tahrir Falahati? It's a song about Iranian identity, borrowing lyrics from a century-old Persian poem about revolution. I can tell you a story about myself. I took lessons when I was in. Iran, I studied music for 10 years before coming here. But I was never allowed to perform in public. Imagine learning something that you love, dreaming of it as your career,

and being completely blocked from it. In Iran, music is. politically contentious. Certain genre of music are banned outright. And there is a ban on women singing solo in public. It is one of the reasons Tahedah came to Canada. In Iran, the voice of female singer is forbidden. When your voice is banned, it is not censorship.

It's taking away your right to be a musician. You can practice your art. You can build a career. You can't even earn a living from it. For me, that I'm in Canada, actually I'm one of the luckiest woman in the world, that I can leave my country coming in Canada. And I can tell you that I will never forget the first time that my feet touched this. age. That feeling of freedom and liberation singing openly from the first time is incredible.

My mom, she's an opera singer. I'm 36. For a opera singer. For 30. For 30. six years, I couldn't hear my mom's voice. And it's pain, you know, because my friends go to her concert. Because women's allowed to have concert for just women. Right. And my friends have covered. She is a superstar. And, you know, I always have a dream that, wow, what could be she on stage?

What is she doing on the stage? I can truly feel how Tahir feel about the singing. This is music recorded in Tehran, in Radaki Hall, home of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. It is a piece by Kafe, titled Golestan. The music was inspired by the downing of Ukraine Flight 752, a flight from Tehran to Kiev in 2020. The plane was shot down by the Iranian military shortly after. takeoff. 176 people were killed, including 63 Canadians.

They attack, they launched missiles to the flight, Ukrainian flight. We were in shock. We couldn't believe that terrific event. At the time, the plane was shot down, Kave was scheduled to perform at a music festival with the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. So, of course, I resigned from the music festival. Not only me, but a lot of musicians. He tried to cancel his appearance at the festival in protest.

They told me, Kavi, you shouldn't do that. If you do it, we will fire you from a Taron Symphony Orchestra. And I didn't care. But some days after, my phone was ringing with no color ID. And it was from revolutionary guard. It's like a dead end. They called you, you will lose everything. Talk to me that you have to do this.

If you do not do this, we will ban you from any activity in music forever. And they will do it. There is no joke with that. Kave went ahead with the concert, but he decided to write a new piece. I decided, okay, what should I do right now? I couldn't go on the stage and conduct classical pieces and also my compositions. I decided to write a music, Gouleston, which is about that tragedy. The piece started with Gleysandos, the sound of flight.

And this piece for string orchestra and children's choirs, because in that flight, unfortunately, we lost lots of children. So in the middle of peace, children are screaming or even laughing with the harmony and dark harmonies of strings. The combination of this is a kind of scary music for me. After the concert, Kave got another call, and he was arrested. Yeah, they arrested me for that. They thought that I'm a spy, or I commissioned from Israel.

Kave was interrogated, but wasn't charged. I had a great lawyer, and he, he saved me. Two years later, during the women-life freedom protests of 2022, the TSO went on strike. Several members were fired, and Kave was banned from working with the symphony. Iman, why is music so politically contentious in Iran?

At the time I was a teenager, I thought maybe it's because music is, it holds tremendous power, and they know that. and I came to that conclusion because I saw that music was banned in some ways and in some forms on one hand. And on the other hand, we are surrounded by this kind of nationalistic music, music that is inspiring people to go to war, you know. And that music is, it's working. You know, you play what they had, it was called so rude. Like we had, this was kind of like this Russian army choir type of thing.

And it really inspired, you know, it would inspire a 13-year-old, 15-year-old, 16-year-old to go and give their life. And I'm not saying that it was the music alone. It was a lot of ideology behind it, but if music has that power, what else can it do? And that's the kind of thing that I thought about as a teenager. And at the same time, I was studying Western classical music and reading about Beethoven being a philosopher. And so I was combining those two things together. So music can do a lot more than just music. And yeah, that's essentially what brought me to music.

This was a piece written in response to the 2009 Iranian election, which became very controversial and led to widespread protests, which I think was a huge social awakening. You know, these protests happen in kind of cascades, and one leads to another. But at the time, that was a movement that a lot of us resonated with, and there were reverberations of it all over the world. And I was living in Vancouver at the time, and I remember outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, we had silent protests. This piece I wrote for the Vancouver Peace Choir,

who asked for a piece at the time. And I also got introduced to a wonderful Iranian-Canadian author Marina Nehmet. She's the author of Prisoner of Tehran. I just kind of casually asked her, do you have, have you written anything about this? And she sent me this magnificent unpublished poem. And I believe her poem was called Freedom. And so I used her poem as kind of the English text. And then I juxtaposed it with Baba Tahir's poetry.

And for me, that's the voice of the Iranian people. who is mostly expressing pain and this feeling of suffocation and being stuck, and it's just screaming, essentially. And then the choir is kind of like us observing the situation. We're kind of at a distance, and we're kind of singing in sympathy. That piece is so dear to me because, you know, pieces of music that you write, they're like your children, and then you watch them go out into the world,

and accomplish things for themselves and go places and as they grow, all these memories and all these things get attached to them. So Color of Freedom has been so many places we've performed it at concerts where we've collected signatures for the release of political prisoners. Some of them have been released,

and this is with the help of Marina Neumat. So this piece has gone in so many places and so many of these memories kind of come back to my mind every time I hear it. Another thing that I like about it is the way it brings Western choral tradition with the Persian singing, and it gets performed in places where we get audiences of both kinds. And those people from the Persian community who are familiar with that kind of singing, come and tell me, well, I'd never heard a choir sing like this before.

And the people from the Western community go and say, I'd never heard singing like that, where can I hear more of that? And I think that kind of bridge that we can form between that cultural gap that exists, that's how we can begin the conversations. That's how we can find our commonalities in beauty. We can find the commonality. And when we find those commonalities, we can hopefully down the line remove the reasons for bombs to be dropped on each other and for threats and for weapons and all of that.

So that may be very idealistic, but that's the aspiration. Our episode is called Echoes of Iran. I'm speaking with three musicians and composers all originally from Iran, Kaveh Mir Hussaini, Tahrir Falahati, and Iman Habibi. This is Ideas, and I'm Nala Ayed. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson, and I host the Daily News podcast, Front Burner. And lately, I'll see a story about, I don't know, political corruption or something. and think, during a normal time, we'd be talking about this for weeks.

But then it's almost immediately overwhelmed by something else. On Front Burner, we are trying to pull lots of story threads together so that you don't lose the plot. So you can learn how all these threads fit together. Follow Front Burner wherever you get your podcasts. All three of our guests have had to navigate the tensions of being a musician in Iran before coming to Canada. Tahere and Eman both live permanently in Canada. Kave is from Tehran, currently studying music at the University of Toronto. Each of them have used music to channel the pain and uncertainty of turmoil in Iran

and to maintain a connection to home. Just three days after the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began, all three of them join me for our conversation. Amen. Many of your pieces include ancient and medieval poetry. What's the thinking behind bringing these kind of older texts into modern, Western, classical contexts, especially right now? Well, I think they're timeless. That's the simplest answer. They speak to the most kind of basic, the most basic things that makes us human, things like love, longing, loss. like if I wanted to summarize Persian poetry, it's all about longing. You're kind of searching for beloved.

One secret that I can share about myself is that if I really like a piece of poetry, maybe Marina's poem is an exception to that, but if I really, really like a piece of poetry, it's actually very difficult for me to set it to music. Like if I have a long... Why? If you have a long relationship with a poem

that you've read, you know, the way you read it is a kind of music music in itself when you think about it. So to impose another... Exactly. It ruins it. And I'm sometimes offended when somebody else. That's a poem that I really like. I was like, oh, no, that's just not how that poem goes.

This is how it goes. But I can't do... I don't feel like I can do it any better myself. So a lot of the poetry that I said are poetry that are fresh to me. And I need to see that poetry, read that poetry for the first time and hear music. Taher. In the same manner, many of your songs also are inspired by 19th century or even older poetry. What's important to you about bringing these kind of older works into contemporary music?

Well, Iranian music is deeply intertwined with its culture. And it carries the pain of the people, the history, their poetry, the resilience. For example, one of my song, As Choun of Javanan'an Latan Damida. From the blood of the youths of the homeland, tulips have grown. This song was written by Arif Akhazvini about 100 years ago when many young people were killed fighting for freedom. In this song, a tulip grows for freedom.

from their blood. And in Iranian culture, the tulip is a symbol of sacrifice. So this song carries both sadness and hope. And for more than 100 years, people have returned to this song in different time. And today, many feel it connects the past and the present. So here is from the blood of the youth of the homeland tulips. have grown. Tahre, when you sing that piece, what's the feeling attached to it?

I was fully connected to the lyric. And at the same time, I feel that this song written 100 years ago is talking about the today's issue, what we're dealing with it. It's talking about the rights have been taken away from people from 100 years ago. So you don't feel that it's 100 years ago, 200 years ago. You think that it's been written right now. And on the other hand, I know that the music has a huge impact on society. And music becomes your language.

And through metaphor, rhythm, melody, and storytelling, you can express what cannot be said directly when you're silence. That was from the blood of the youth of the homeland, Tulips Have Grown, a poem and protest song written during Iran's constitutional revolution in the early 20th century. Is there any new meaning you hear, Amman, in this music today? Well, I mean, I think what she said about it, connecting past to present, I found that fascinating. I think it's a poetry that's very heavy.

But at the same time, the music had such amazing rhythmic vitality to it and rhythmic energy to it, yeah. And I love that about the music. And I think maybe that's intended. Maybe that's supposed to say that, you know, spring is coming despite the dark times as you're going through. And so it's that feeling of optimism in it. And, yeah, it certainly lifted me,

little bit, lifted my spirit a little bit. Calve, did you hear optimism, hope in that music? Yeah, of course. But let me first start with Ta-a-Tarajan. It was a great performance. Wow, wonderful. It was great, yeah. I always attached to this music and it impact a lot on Iranian people.

Most of the Iranians, more than millions, knows this piece and have memories with this wonderful music. And it's a live music. in every moment, in every occasion that happened, we always sing this piece and it works. I'm curious from all three of you, just what the conversation has been like. When we say the Iranian community, of course, that's simplifying things. It's a large community, different places in Canada, different cities, different backgrounds. I'm just curious, I'm just what's that conversation been like since this war began?

I think there are many different approaches, many different. ideologies, many different factions, whether political, whether it's about the future of Iran, whether it's kind of about the social awareness of the society and what kind of future is well suited for them. Like even those basic things, I think there's a lot of disagreements. And I personally, I don't see, as someone who's been in Canada for 23 years now, I was kind of unscripted when I left Iran and I never went back. As someone who's been here for 23 years, I don't give myself the right to make decisions for the people who are living in Iran because they're the ones who pay the price. They're the ones who, whatever government comes after,

they have to be living with it. I've gotten married here. I have the family here now. I don't see it in my future necessarily that I'd be moving back there, at least not in the near future. So as someone who's not going to be doing that, what right do I have to make that decision for them? And as someone who's been away for 23 years, I don't give myself the right to comment on what those people want. And because of the communication blackout that we've had, it's so much more difficult to actually hear what it is that they want. And some people seem so certain that they know what they want. I'm not so certain that I know what they want. So again, that's what I would say.

I'm also in the dark with that. I'm not sure exactly. I think there are certain things that most people can agree on. Things like this particular Iranian government is at the end of its life. But beyond that, I think there's not a lot of things that we can all come together and agree on. But some people disagree with me on that. Yeah, so it's very murky what's coming down the road. I'm wondering Kave and Tahre just talk to us about what it's been like among your friends,

family, just watching, waiting. Just tell us what the conversation has been like. Kave first and then, Tahiti. I'm trying to connect inside Iran every day, but it's not that much easy because the government shut down the internet. So they call to my mom or my father or friends and ask how they are. Today I talk to my mom that said, unfortunately, my aunt, she's right now in hospital. But the hospital, has to serve to the other people that injuring during the war. They're existing in the garden or even outside of the hospital. It's horrible.

That's how much demand there is at the hospital. Even they couldn't find medicine during these days. There are certain problems that Iranian people right now inside Iran face to that. So absolutely war is not good. I think all of us, all the Iranians agree with that. But on the other hand, what should we do with the governments? As Tara mentioned, is this a good price for that? Or, you know, it's really hard to answer that.

Tahide, how are you coping and the people around you coping with this situation? Where do you turn to for comfort or information or just dealing with this uncertainty? Well, my mom lives in Iran, my two sisters with their families, my cousins, my aunt, you know, my whole families are there. My husband's size, they're living in Iran. And every day, I can talk to them for just a few seconds over the WhatsApp. This morning, my mom just texted me that we're okay. Every day, you know, the text that I can get from them, it's okay, it's okay. And my sister said that, do you know that there is no pre-warning attack silence here?

No warnings. No warning. There is no serious broadcasting for them. There is no shelter for people. And it's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. This is a piece of music from Kave Mir Hosseini called Illusion. It also relates to home, pain, and the culture of Iran.

It's inspired by folk music from southeastern Iran, a region called Balochistan, bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran is a multicultural country. So each city has different language, different dress, music, culture. I always eager to learn and become familiar with those kind of music. I was in a really bad time and I was depressed. So I traveled Iran three times, village by village, especially remote villages to record and research about them. I researched about music of Balochistan.

The piece is inspired by a health ritual performed in Balochistan. They have a kind of music therapy. They call it Guati. The ritual for a sick or depressed person uses musical repetition to create a trance and eventually to force unclean spirits to leave the body. Its souls goes out and flies. They believe that. Here is that moment in illusion. In my opinion, it's an international language. Music can speak internationally and it doesn't belong to anywhere.

What a beautiful description. Oh, thank you very much. Very nice. Cover, I really like your piece. Oh, thank you very much. It's like that you're telling a story without using a word just through the music. And while I was listening, I found myself at the morning. And I could see a word. woman. I could see a woman sitting in the desert and mourning for their loved one that she lost.

That was my feeling. And at the end of it, you brought hope and light to the music. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Amon, any thoughts? Of course. I mean, I already know Kave's music so much. We've been friends for a while now. and I've heard this piece before. It's just fascinating. I love that in any moment of it, there's just so much to listen to. It's the textures are just so magnificent.

And again, just the way you blend things together. And the pain that is in this music, I think so much of the music that a lot of us Iranians, right, carry so much pain or the poetry does. And I think that goes back to what we've been living for decades. I mean, our entire life, really. even speaking as someone who's been in Canada for 23 years, but my emotional attachment to Iran, it's still very strong.

And so... Is this still home for you? I don't feel... Maybe this is sacrilegious to say, but I don't feel like I have a home. I feel like I'm kind of... Yeah, I can be anywhere and make it home, but that place will never truly feel like home.

Yeah, if I could add something, to what Kaveh and Tohara were saying. I don't quite believe that music is a universal language in the way that a lot of people say. I believe that music is a language that we can learn a lot easier. But it takes effort. If you introduce Bach's music to someone who has no familiarity with that kind of music, they're lost in it. But if you kind of get them into that music, if they listen to it, if they find, a channel in and they can connect with that, they enter that sound world and it, and, you know,

it slowly kind of lives with them. And it's the same with Iranian music. You know, you have to find, you have to bridge that cultural gap. And I think that's what, what we try to do, I think, all three of us, you know, at the very least as musicians who are active in Canada now, you know, so the platforms that we have are platforms that are mostly shared with people in Canada. But yeah, as I said earlier, music has the power to effect lasting change, change that it can change the constellations, but give it time. You have to give you time to do that. So don't be disheartened. If you're a music maker and you're listening to this, don't be disheartened if you don't see the impact of your music within your lifetime even. You know, wait until somebody else comes and discovers your work and builds on that. All kinds of things can happen, and there's a ripple effect. You have to be the butterfly that flaps its wings, and you just have to wait to see what happens elsewhere in the world.

I just have one last question for each of you, but Tahrade, I want to start it with you. I'm just curious whether you think you'll ever sing in Tehran one day. Oh, that was my dream. To sing in Tehran? Yeah, that's my dream. Kawe was talking about having a concert in Iran and I was thinking, oh, good for him

and I wish I could sing in Tehran, close my eyes and open from my heart. And for both of you, Kavei first, just whatever you're able to say about what your hopes are for Iran in the future. First of all, freedom. and see my people living in peace without any stress, then I would like to again have a concert with Tehran Symphony Orchestra.

Rudeke Hall is like my second home. When my mom was pregnant me, she was on the stage of Rula Keval. You knew it before you were born. Yeah. Somehow I was born and raised them in Tehran Symphony Orchestra. And I really will love to go there one time and have a concert with TSO. Okay. And, Derman?

My hope and wish for Iran is that it can be a beacon of light for the whole world. That if somebody asks you, what is the greatest place for human rights? You can say, look at Iran. Look at how these people are doing it. You can say, look at this diverse geography that they have. And look at their rivers and look at their lakes. when they ask you, I don't know, who has respected their religions and then the diversity that their country holds, you can point to the diversity of cultures and religions and languages

and music and poetry that exists in Iran and say, look at these people. And the thing is that Iranians deserve to have this. This is the most magnificent culture that I know. And when I say this, when I say culture, I'm thinking of the kindness that, these people have, the generosity that they have, the culture of reciprocity. An Iranian family, in the toughest economic conditions, they will take the food from their own plate and they will put it in front of you. And so I feel like these people really deserve the best and the greatest, and that's what I wish for them. Thank you. And thank you all for coming in at such a

difficult time for you and your friends and family. And I hope that all those you love are safe and well. So Kaveh, Tahere, and Iman, thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for having laws. Thank you very much. It's been an honor. Thank you. Thank you. Eman Habibi is an award-winning composer and pianist, originally from Tehran, and he now lives in Toronto. Kaveh Mir Hussaini is an Iranian composer and conductor from Tehran, currently studying music at the University of Toronto. Anne Tahré Falahti is a traditional Persian singer. She joined us from Vancouver.

Ideas is a broadcast and the podcast. If you like the episode you just heard, check out our vast archive, where you can find more than 300 of our past episodes. This episode was produced by Matthew Laysen Rider. Technical production Sam McNulty. Our web producer is Lisa Ayy. You so. Senior producer Nicola Luxchich. Greg Kelly is the executive producer of ideas, and I'm Nala Ayyed.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.