Kiosk: Rocking the California Casbah

The San Francisco-based alternative Iranian band performs at the Skirball

concert review by Babak Nahid

In the past decade or more, Iranian artists in film, art and music have been working to shed their derivative, Western poses for a more homegrown mash-up of artistic and cultural styles that reflects contemporary Iranian realities.

Kiosk, a San Francisco-based band from Tehran, is a product of this movement, and yet it's one of the first Iranian rock bands with a more universal appeal that speaks not only to Iranians at home and abroad, but also cuts across cultural borders in ways that only music can.

Celebrating the blues rock style of Dire Straits, J.J. Cale, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Stevie Ray Vaughn, with a pinch of gypsy rock every now and then, Kiosk's music rings pleasantly familiar to Western ears. Cool, politically savvy, and surprisingly sincere, Kiosk is a cultural import that travels reasonably well, even if its biting Persian lyrics fail to leave much of a mark on an English-only audience.

During their recent L.A. performance at the Skirball Cultural Center on March 7, 2008 (part of the Center's exhibition "Bob Dylan's American Journey, 1956-1966") Kiosk roused 500 or so audience members out of their seats to shake their booties.

The predominantly Persian crowd was well-dressed, fragrant with over-priced perfumes, and loudly appreciative, singing the songs' refrains with almost as much passion as one might at any Western rock concert. The non-Iranians enjoyed themselves too despite being excluded from the lyrics.

Arash Sobhani

At times during the evening, however, Kiosk seemed a tad tired, playing their instruments a lick too lackluster. Even as Arash Sobhani, the lead singer, or the “Persian Knopfler,” dedicated a song or two to women across the globe on the occasion of International Women's Day, he sounded more insouciant than concerned, his "on-stage" cool cloaking his commitment.

And there in the front row sat conservatively dressed, well-heeled Iranian men and women in their 50s and 60s, looking elegant but slightly confused by the alchemy of bluesy rock and clever, socially critical Farsi lyrics delivered in a Dylanesque deadpan. One, my mother's age, eventually started tapping her suddenly shoeless feet.

As the softly bitter lyrics in songs like "Roozmaregi" ("The Everyday"), Eshgheh Sorat ("Love of Speed") and "Bitarbiat" ("Rude") punctured wealth and privilege, chauvinism, ignorance, hypocrisy, regressive ideologies, false pieties, vapid consumerism and everyday corruption among Iranians, more feet started tapping and more bodies bounced onto the floor. Here we were, smug Tehrangelenos, dancing to the tune of our own indictment!

Soon the area before the stage was writhing with both the young and the middle-aged bobbing up and down and singing along with Arash as he poked at the contradictions of modern Iran:

No need for cardiologists
Just facelifts by cosmetologists

Immoral zealots, fanatic factions
Chinese-style economic expansions

Religious democratic droppings
Pizza with Ghormeh Sabzi* topping...

Kiosk features Arash Sobhani on guitar and vocals, Ali Kamali on bass guitar, Ardalan Payvar on keyboards, Babak Khiavchi on guitar (and the band's capable producer), Shahrooz Molaei on drums and Anoush Khazeni on guitar and backup vocals.

Founded in the early 1990's and evolving in the basements and private homes of Khatami's Tehran, Kiosk was celebrated as an underground band—as Wikipedia notes—"for its Mark Knopfler sounding melodies and its political but humorous lyrics":

Nothing for lunch or dinner to make,
But let them eat Yellowcake
Scraped up the very last dime
Sent it straight to Palestine


	Eshghe Sorat (Love of Speed)

Their only two albums, Adam Mamooli (An Ordinary Man, 2005) and Eshgheh Sorat (Love of Speed, 2007), remain officially illegal in Iran, but they are ubiquitous in the Mp3 players and hard drives of the majority of the nation's youth. A third album is scheduled for release in a few months.

Kiosk is certainly enjoyable. Their music is catchy and clean, their lyrics at times deliciously transgressive, and their music videos pointed and fun. But they're still evolving and must overcome fresh risks and obstacles in the U.S. So, in the spirit of a true but sober-minded fan, I humbly offer the following suggestions if Kiosk wants to thrive rather than atrophy beyond its native soil:

• Play more passionately, as if you're back in a Tehran basement, with less coyness on the instruments.

• Release a few catchy bilingual songs in both English and Farsi, to speak to a much larger international audience.

• Break your own rules or grow stale.

• Continue to pioneer ways to facilitate, incubate and export new music from Iran.

• Choose your producers carefully. Faustian bargains in the music business are often no bargain at all in the long run.

It is said that repression can germinate creativity. Thankfully, Iran has never been a cultural or artistic desert, whether under the rule of the Shah, Khomeini, Khatami or Ahmadinejad. So if a now-transplanted Kiosk still sounds a little amateurish and under-produced, thank goodness. Underground music in Iran owes much of its edge to rough digital home recording, subterranean performances and lawless Internet distribution. Too polished a sound will only amplify the charges of irrelevance made against a now-expatriate band by those back in Iran who continue to make great music in the dark and in secret.

Unless they fight it tooth and nail, cooptation is Kiosk's fate in America, as it is with any band that begins to whet the appetite of the marketplace. After all, Kiosk's members have settled mostly on the West Coast, with “Tehrangeles” as the motherlode of annoying, Cheese-Puffy Persian pop-music whose purveyors enjoy lots of cash, mediocre talent, and dollops of dubious politics. If Kiosk gets too cozy here, it will be playing at weddings and Bat Mitzvahs.

My wish for Kiosk is for it to continue to make good music with the same trenchant lyrics here in the U.S. as they do over there in the "axis," so that American and international audiences can also get the benefit.

So welcome, Kiosk, to America, but please no slouching. Dig a little and you'll find ample contradictions in this land of the free and the home of brave, enough to inspire songs just as feisty and fresh. In 1982, The Clash sang “Rock the Casbah” in response to Khomeini's banning of Western music. Today, we need you, Kiosk, to rock our casbah right here in the U.S.

* Ghormeh Sabzi: a traditional Persian savory stew loaded with green herbs and vegetables (cilantro, dill, spinach, parsley, chives, leeks etc.), often with lamb or beef.

Babak Nahid is a Los Angeles writer and nonprofit management consultant.

Kiosk web site.