Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the differences and similarities between the war music and rituals of the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, and, the engagement of Iran in the war in Syria since 2010. It takes an alternative perspective in focusing on the creativity and emotions of religious beliefs.

Paper long abstract:

The paper compares the emotional constitutive force in mobilisation of forces for the defence against the Iraqi invasion of Iran in the 1980s and the looser fabrication of a resistance discourse in engagement of Iranian forces in Syria since 2010. It accounts for a dramatic shift from a popular active resistance of volunteer forces and artists, towards a marginalised state sanctioned passive resistance. Close observations of the musical and religious rituals at the moment reveals a dilemma of a gap in cultural hegemony of the state over engaging the popular culture with the culture of those volunteering for the Syria that is totally in contrast with the emotional empowerment of the masses during the 1980s.

The paper assesses the music and religious rituals of the war in the 1980s as an active practice of resilience that stems through a serene characteristics of the honest Iranian forces and artists in comparison with a diluted and distorted top-down state sanctioned cultural creative force behind the music of the Syria wars. It would also eventually illuminate how the political negativity and antagonism since 1979 - and more effectively from 1989 - have effectively drained the creativity and honest emotional engagement of the artists with the state. In addition, it reveals how the politics of emotions works for the current volunteer forces in their own understandings once the productions shifts from eulogising the leaders and the commanders towards a narrative of the volunteers themselves, that is closer to the 1980s.