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Special Features

Iranian Women you Should Know: Sima Bina

August 14, 2015
IranWire
4 min read
Iranian Women you Should Know: Sima Bina

Global and Iranian history are both closely intertwined with the lives and destinies of prominent figures. Every one of them has laid a brick on history’s wall, sometimes paying the price with their lives, men and women alike. Women have been especially influential in the past 200 years, writing much of contemporary Iranian history.

In Iran, women have increased public awareness about gender discrimination, raised the profile of and improved women’s rights, fought for literacy among women, and promoted the social status of women by counteracting religious pressures, participating in scientific projects, being involved in politics, influencing music, cinema... And so the list goes on.

This series aims to celebrate these renowned and respected Iranian women. They are women who represent the millions of women that influence their families and societies on a daily basis. Not all of the people profiled in the series are endorsed by IranWire, but their influence and impact cannot be overlooked. The articles are biographical stories that consider the lives of influential women in Iran.

IranWire readers are invited to send in suggestions for how we might expand the series. Contact IranWire via email ([email protected]), on Facebook, or by tweeting us.

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She wears pleated skirts and paisley vests; throws a small lace shawl over her hair and sings folk songs in local dialects. Men, women and children alike hum these songs across Iran, songs that both entertain and sadden, songs that are sung by Sima Bina.

Bina performs at concerts all over the world, which is what makes her audiences so international. Her sweet voice, which sings folk songs and which is accompanied by traditional musical instruments, could charm any audience. During a performance, she stands next to a nearly-all female band dressed in traditional costume playing instruments, such as the tar, the kamancheh, the setar, the kanun and the santour.

Sima Bina was born in 1945 in Birjand in the northeastern province of Khorasan. She came to know music and poetry through her father Ahmad Bina, who was also a singer and a master of classical Iranian music. He even wrote the lyrics to her early songs.

She was just nine years old when her singing career began, performing on a children’s program on national radio. Her early success did not slow her down from continuing to pursue her musical education; she was taught by some of the finest Iranian musicians. After finishing high school, she enrolled at the Tehran-based School of Fine Arts to study painting. “I am as much in love with painting as I am with music,” she later said in an interview with Shargh newspaper.

Bina has also designed her own clothing, both for herself and her band, and created set designs. While studying painting, she learnt from Abdollah Davami, a master of Iranian music, and set out to put together a collection of folk songs.

Her search began at her place of birth, Khorasan, where she listened to villagers singing old folk songs, wrote them down and eventually added them to her collection. This revived songs that the younger generation had never heard and made them available to city-dwellers.

She then travelled to other parts of Iran, including Lorestan in the southwest, Mazandaran in the north and Kurdistan in the West, listening, taking notes and learning. Later she sang these folk songs.

Then, when women were banned from singing solo during the early years of the Islamic Revolution, Bina began giving singing and music lessons to women, which became very popular. 

“Women were very enthusiastic to participate in singing and music classes despite all the obstacles they faced,” Bina explains. “After the revolution, I also started doing private concerts for small all-female audiences, whilst also taking all the necessary precautions.” 

“These concerts were a chance to showcase pieces of traditional folk music in settings that were prepared by women at their own homes for groups of arts students, relatives and friends," she says. "The concerts were very professional and beautiful.”

Over the past decade, she has also begun collecting Iranian folk lullabies, which she tried to promote in Iran. Islamic Republic authorities refused to grant her a permit. However, she has managed to release four CDs, which included mothers singing, in Germany and Dubai. Each CD contains a booklet with pictures and drawings of mothers and children.

“Lullaby lyrics can tell you many things,” she told German news outlet Deutsche Welle. “You can discover the culture of a region by dissecting its lullabies. You can see how women and mothers think within a specific geographic boundary. You can hear the melodies of that region’s music. You can even feel the geography of the region — whether it’s mountainous, warm, etc.—through them, [let alone] the language, the dialect and the tone.”

“I am both a woman and a mother and that is why I set out to collect these female tunes,” Sima Bina explains.

Bina has a son, Arash, also a lover of music. He is passionate about rock music.

Sima Bina is now 70 years old. Her love of classical Iranian music and folk songs remains as strong as ever.

 

 

Also in the series:

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Jinous Nemat Mahmoudi

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Simin Behbahani

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Forough Farrokhzad

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Parvin Etesami

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Farokhru Parsa

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Jamileh Sadeghi

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Fatemeh Daneshvar

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Fatemeh Moghimi

50 Iranian Women you Should Know: Googoosh

 

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Freedom of Press, Iranian Style

August 14, 2015
Mana Neyestani
Freedom of Press, Iranian Style