FARZANE ZAMEN
Farzané's
Story
Farzané is an independent musician and singer-songwriter from Tehran, Iran, now based in Glasgow, United Kingdom.
Active since 2008, she began her musical journey with great enthusiasm, teaching herself to write songs, produce her own work, and remain completely independent in Iran’s male-dominated music market. She persevered through countless negotiations with online platforms to release her music, as opportunities within Iran were almost non-existent: after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, solo singing by women was banned, bringing women’s public musical expression to an abrupt end.
Despite this, she never gave up. She recorded her songs with patience and care, creating an album she had hoped to call A Few Steps to Morning. But as the online market was not supportive of full albums, she chose to release the tracks one by one. The response was not what she had envisioned; she describes herself as someone deeply disconnected from Iran’s mainstream music. In her twenties she listened mostly to Western pop, pop-rock, grunge, and electronic music, all of which shaped her own sound.
Later, collaborations with organisations in Norway and the UK led to her receiving a fellowship from the Artist Protection Fund, enabling her to move to Glasgow in 2017. There, she created an experimental electro-fusion project with local musicians. The resulting album, Z Bent, explored the shrinking space afforded to women under Islamic laws. Her perspective was not always welcomed by Muslim communities in the West, as the lived reality of women in Iran felt distant and intangible to many.
A new Norwegian record label offered to publish Z Bent, and she agreed; however, unclear communication and a lack of artist-centred marketing left her disappointed. She eventually withdrew, leaving the album as an experimental piece rather than a commercial release. It was performed locally in Glasgow in 2018 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts and at Clad Café, though she herself never performed the Z Bent album live. Instead, she continued searching for other ways to express herself creatively.
Vision
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