Underground Music Scenes and the Politics of Heritage: Notes from Iran and Tunisia

The paper explores how “underground” music scenes embrace cultural heritage, looking at the cases of Tunisia after its 2010/2011 Revolution, and of Iran since the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement (2022/2023). In these two contexts heritage is used as a resource and a frame of reference, providing musicians a tool for aesthetic experimentation and a source of cultural capital. However, heritage is always socially constructed and contested: by adopting and reworking cultural repertoires as “heritage”, musicians position themselves in broader societal controversies, and music scenes become loci of conflict. Iranian music scenes, for instance, have recently witnessed a rediscovery of imaginaries linked to pre-Islamic Persia, together with a resurgence of nostalgia towards the years of Reza Shah Pahlavi. Some musicians are embracing these imaginaries in opposition to the Islamic Republic, evoking a romanticized past that is simultaneously exalted and mourned. Such musical politics of heritage ultimately remarginalize the gendered and ethnically connoted dimensions of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement, recalibrating Iranian cultural conflicts as a war between conservative masculinities. The Revolution of 2010/2011 cast Tunisia as a cultural battlefield: the country’s history and collective identity have been mobilized by different actors struggling to define Tunisia’s future. In this situation, musicians play with various forms of heritage, including local “folk” music styles; elements from Amazigh, Arab, Islamic, and African cultural repertoires; and the collective memory of Revolution itself. Heritage is used as a move of “cultural reappropriation” and as a creative way to reflect on the country’s current turmoil, but also as a way to position Tunisian underground music within global scenes and markets. Through these case studies, we reflect on music scenes as conflictual sites for the production of collective identities, and investigate how scenes participate in the political struggle for heritage, at the local and the global level.