Sima’s Choices

Abstract

This chapter discusses the life and career of Iranian singer Sima Shokrani. She specializes in Mazanderani repertoire and language, and was profoundly influenced by the work songs of her grandmother. Demonstrating an engagement with political and ideological issues from childhood, Sima challenged linguistic constraints and participated in the revolution of 1979 as a university student of twenty-one. She has shaped her career as a woman singer within the well-known constraints in Iran, as restrictions are placed around women singers by law. Making choices to sing songs that articulate women's agency in romantic and other relationships, she negotiates her multiple identities in private and public singing contexts. Supported by her husband, and despite the migration of her daughters to Germany, Sima chooses to remain in Iran, where she fulfills a role as a senior woman.