A tribute to Marzieh

Oct. 13, 2012 was the 2nd anniversary of Marzieh's passing, the Diva of Persian music. Ashraf o-Sadat Mortezaie known professionally as Marzieh, was born in 1924 in Tehran and died of Cancer on October 13, 2010.

Marzieh started her career in the 1940s at Radio Tehran and cooperated with some of the greatest 20th century Persian songwriters and lyricists such as Ali Tajvidi, Parviz Yahaghi, Homayoun Khorram, Rahim Moeini Kermanshahi and Bijan Taraghi. Marzieh also sang with the Farabi Orchestra, conducted by Morteza Hannaneh, a pioneer of Persian polyphonic music, during the 1960s and 1970s. Her first major public performance was in 1942, when, though still a teenager, she played the principal role of Shirin at the Jame Barbud opera house in the Persian operetta Shirin

 o Farhad.

Following the 1979 Revolution as the mullahs got power, public performances and broadcasts of record albums by solo female singers were banned outright. Ayatollah Khomeini had decreed: "Women's voices should not be heard by men other than members of their own families."

Marzieh told the Daily Telegraph that in order to continue her vocal practice she used to walk at night from her home in the historic north-Tehran Niavaran foothills to her cabin in the mountains, where she would sing next to a roaring waterfall: "Nobody could hear me. I sang to the stars and the rocks."



Upon the death of Khomeini the successor mullahs suggested that she could resume singing, provided that she undertook never to sing for men. She refused of course, declaring, "I have always sung only for all Iranians,".

In 1994 Marzieh left Iran forever due to the political repression, making her new home in Paris where she joined the National Council of resistance and began her political life abroad.

She performed several concerts in Los Angeles, California and Royal Albert Hall (London) in 1993, 1994 and 1995. The Paris-based composer Mohammad Shams and the Persian tar soloist Hamid Reza Taherzadeh were the main musicians who worked with Marzieh in exile.

France 3, a regional TV news and entertainment channel, has compared Marzieh's singing voice to those of legendary singers Édith Piaf and Maria Callas. On the other hand, the European press have also compared her to Vanessa Redgrave and Melina Mercouri for her willingness to put political and human-rights beliefs ahead of her career, even her own safety.

Marzieh died of cancer in Paris on October 13, 2010, at age 86.

Maryam Rajavi, the president elect of the National Council of Resistance who was very close to Marzieh, delivered her eulogy and said: "Marzieh was the symbol of protest and revolt in Iranian art against the fascism of velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule).... Hail to Marzieh; the great, brave and pious woman who 16 years ago joined the Iranian Resistance and offered her complete support and compassion, and, in doing so, blended art with the love for freedom and the magnum opus of human qualities.