One of the new honors the Grammy Awards will introduce at their next ceremony is song for social change —a special-merit award that “recognizes creators of message-driven music that responds to the social issues of our time and has the potential for positive global impact.”
While the honor is “curated by a blue-ribbon committee,” there’s little question that the number of submissions will have an impact —and according to the Recording Academy, 95,000 of the 115,000 submissions received have been for Iranian musician Shervin Hajipour’s song, “Baraye,” a protest song about 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested and beaten by Iran’s so-called morality police for not wearing a proper head covering, in line with the country’s Islamic law.
The country has been wracked by protests — including women burning their hijabs, or headdresses, in front of police —in the weeks since her death was made public, despite the government’s efforts to suppress them and attempts at media coverage.
The lyrics to “Baraye” are taken entirely from messages that Iranians have posted online regarding their reasons for protesting: Each begins with the word baraye, which means “For …” or “Because of …” in Farsi. In the song, Hajipour sings lyrics such as, “For dancing in the streets, for kissing loved ones” and “forwomen, life, freedom,” which crowds have often changed during the protests following Amini’s death.
Hajipour released the song online late last month and it quickly went viral, racking up millions of pageviews and being sung by schoolgirls in Iran, blared from car windows in Tehran and played at solidarity protests in the U.S. and Europe, according to the Guardian.
Not surprisingly, he was arrested days later, although last week a state prosecutor told state news agency IRNA that Hajipour had been released on bail “so that his case can go through the legal process.”
Sources close to Hajipour told the Guardian the singer was made to remove the song from Instagram when he was arrested. It has since been registered as having been written by someone else, causing copyright-infringement issues that have led to it being removed by multiple streaming platforms, although it has already been widely shared and continues to be uploaded by users on YouTube.
Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. said, “The Academy is deeply moved by the overwhelming volume of submissions for Shervin Hajipour’s “Baraye” (“For The Sake Of”) for ournew Special Merit Award, Best Song for Social Change. While we cannot predict who might win the award, we are humbled by the knowledge that the Academy is a platform for people who want to show support for the idea that music is a powerful catalyst for change.The Academy steadfastly supports freedom of expression andart that’s created to empower communities in need. Because music serves the world, and the Recording Academy exists to serve music.”
On Sept. 13, Amini was travelling with her family to visit relatives when she was arrested for failing to meet the country’s strict rules on women’s dress. Witnesses reported that Aminiwas beaten in the police van — which police have denied —taken to hospital in a coma and died two days later. An Iranian coroner has claimed that she died of pre-existing conditions and not from wounds she received at the hands of police.
