The Iranian female DJs shaking the dance floor

Mixed-sex raves are illegal in Iran but they happen anyway. Some of the female DJs getting the crowds dancing are also breaking taboos. The 1979 Islamic Revolution turned the country’s cultural life upside-down. Pop music, deemed non-revolutionary, was banned, so many musicians fled.

Paramida is a Berlin-based DJ, producer and record label owner. Her mother left Iran because she didn’t want her daughter to live in a country where women were treated so badly. She settled in Germany, but in 2002 she had to return for family reasons, and for four years Paramida went to school in Tehran. Nesa Azadikhah is a 40-year-old DJ born and raised in Tehran.

She was one of the first Iranian women to DJ in underground parties. In the early days, the parties mostly took place in the ski village of Shemshak. But partying in Iran is a crime. People are frequently arrested at underground gatherings, and charged with consuming alcohol or mingling with people of the opposite sex.

It isn’t listed in the penal code, but offences can be punished with fines, prison sentences or lashes. 300 partygoers were detained at a single underground event last November. DJs Nesa and Paramida are part of the Woman, Life, Freedom Project. The project is a compilation of electronic music by female Iranian artists.

Nesa says she was moved by the thousands of protesters chanting, " woman, life, freedom’ in 2022. Both Nesa and Paramida feel that for a woman to go to an electronic underground party is a political statement, in a traditional and religious country such as Iran. Paramida: “The fact that I am able to do what is forbidden for so many women in Iran actually makes me a living protest” Nesa is currently a resident DJ in the Panorama Bar in Berghain, an internationally famous techno club in Berlin. For several years, her visa applications got rejected, as it happens to many other Iranian artists.

Currently there are at least another 10 female DJs in the country’s underground rave world, she says. Nesa has been playing in clubs and festivals from Japan to Brazil. She hasn’t been back to Iran since 2006. She has now got a year-long visa to play in France.

She says: “I feel now I have to work harder and faster, there is more competition here” Paramida will make her BBC Radio 1’s Essential Mix debut on 9 March. Watch the full documentary Iranian Women on the Decks: The DJs breaking cultural taboos on BBC World Service YouTube. Follow BBC 100 Women on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

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