At their sold-out performance in Argentina, Coldplay showed their support for Iranians taking part in demonstrations by performing a song from that nation that is now off-limits.
At their concert in Buenos Aires, the band played “Baraye,” which has emerged as the song of the Iranian protest movement.
Golshifteh Farahani, an Iranian actress in exile who has been barred from returning to her country ever since she appeared in an American movie in 2009, joined the band in singing the Farsi song.
Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who purportedly died in detention after being tortured by Iranian morality police for failing to properly wear a hijab on September 16, sparked protests that have lasted for more than a month.
Amini was first detained in Tehran for allegedly violating the country’s stringent, sharia-based clothing codes for women.
Frontman Chris Martin addressed the 72,000-strong audience, saying, “We would want to do something to convey that we support all the ladies and everyone fighting for freedom in Iran.”
The band chose to make a statement in part because the event was live streamed into 80 different countries and was watched in more than 3,400 theatres.
Since the national demonstrations started on September 16, at least 253 protesters, including 34 children and 19 women, have died across Iran.
The band sang Shervin Hajipour’s Baraye, a protest song that has been outlawed yet has come to symbolize the movement.
He posted the song on September 27 and it received 40 million views in 48 hours before the Iranian authorities detained him on September 29.
When speaking to the audience in Argentina, Chris Martin made reference to the limitations on the right to free speech that Gen Z in Iran must contend with.
You may have seen from the news that there are several locations where people are unable to congregate in this way and be allowed to be who they really are.
“Whether it be to listen to what they want to listen to, dress what they want to wear, believe what they want to think, or love who they want to love, and especially at the moment this is extremely evident in Iran.”
Following the murder of Mahsa Amini while in detention, Shervin Hajipour was inspired to write and compose Baraye by the tweets of regular Iranians who expressed their sorrow and suffering as a result of the Iranian state’s actions.
According to Chris Martin, the band and he considered “what could we do” to help the Iranian protesters and women fighting for their freedom.
Martin said, “We decided that a really lovely and well-known song by a kind man named Shervin Hajipour, whose song is called Baraye, is now popular in Iran, and we asked our friend Gol if she would come and sing this with us.”
The song is in Farsi, so I can’t really sing it, Chris Martin said, but we’re going to sing it together and send it to you with love from Buenos Aires.