The Cultural Dialogue of Fidelity and Rendering in the Music of Googoosh in Hamsafar (1975)

Abstract

This study examines the role of sound and the cultural dialogue of “transnational status” in pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, and more specifically, in the film-Farsi period. This study contributes to the literature because it mainly investigates how gender consciousness was promoted through the music soundscape in film-Farsi. The case study used to analyze and dissect the relationship—or rather, the borders and boundaries between the cultural dialogue of sound and music in film-Farsi—is the 1975 film Hamsafar (Fellow Traveler), directed by Masoud Asadollah. This paper will be of interest to film scholars and enthusiasts because Islamic feminism was infused in the “westoxification” and modernity of the powerful technique shaped by the soundtracks of films made before the Islamic revolution in 1979, especially by the voice and sound of Googoosh in the film Hamsafar.