Abstract
This article argues that the repertoires and afterlives of Hayedeh and Googoosh operate as portable archives through which Iranian collective memory is preserved, transmitted, and contested across generations in the diaspora. Framing both singers as the two most consequential female icons of modern Iranian popular music, the study analyzes how Hayedeh indexes a sonnati (Persian classical–rooted,سنتی) vocal ideal that adapted to 1970s hybrid arrangements while retaining a claim to authenticity, and how Googoosh embodies a 1970s cosmopolitan studio ethos whose reception has since “classicalized” her repertoire as heritage. Methodologically, the article combines close textual analysis of selected songs with reception study of transnational media circuits (broadcast reruns, audience rankings, concert dramaturgy, playlists, and tribute accounts), supplemented by author fieldnotes. The historical context of pre- and post-1979 media regimes situate Tehrangeles (the Los Angeles–based Iranian diaspora hub) as a key site where voice, image, and memory converge. Read together, Hayedeh and Googoosh exemplify Iranianness as a reception-produced category articulated through timbre, modal reference, poetic tropes, and star imagery, enabling dispersed publics to narrate nostalgia, authenticity, and political feeling.
