Israeli singer and actress Liraz Charhi’s latest album has come at an unusually high cost – countless sleepless nights, concern about reprisals and the constant fear she was risking her collaborators’ lives.
To make Zan (“Woman”) Charhi defied the fundamentalist regime in Iran to work in secret with a group of Persian artists, many of whom were so terrified they chose to remain anonymous.
“I had this big dream to record an album with Iranian artists,” says Charhi. “I was very naive because it wasn’t easy. I posted to Instagram in late 2019 that I was looking for Iranian artists to co-operate with for my new album, I got overwhelmed with messages.”
Since 1979, artistic collaboration and visiting from Israel has been a punishable offence in the Islamic Republic of Iran. In May Iran criminalised many more types of co-operation with Israel, including using Israeli software. Authorities have also censored art and music forms of cultural expression, but the laws only vaguely define what “acts against morality” means.
About 20 artists from Tehran collaborated on Zan, sending contributions via the encrypted message service, Telegram.
“I don’t even know how some of these artists look because they didn’t want their faces identified,” Charhi says. “I was afraid for a bit. My parents told me I should be afraid. I had sleepless nights for more than a year, and anxiety. I was asking the producer of the album, ‘Are we doing the right thing?’”
Read the article by Cat Woods in The Sydney Morning Herald.