Abstract
This article argues that the repertoires and “post-production lives” of Hayedeh and Googoosh function as portable archives through which Iranian collective memory is preserved, transmitted, and reinterpreted across generations of the diaspora. By positioning these two as the most influential female singers in contemporary Iranian pop music, I show that Hayedeh indexes a vocal pattern rooted in “traditional” that maintains its claim to “authenticity” while adapting to the hybrid arrangements of the 1970s, and Googoosh is the bearer of the cosmopolitan studio aesthetic of the same decade, whose repertoire has been “classicized” and become a legacy in the reception of audiences.
Methodologically, the article combines textual analysis of selected songs with a study of transnational media reception and circulation (replays, vote-based lists, concert dramaturgy, playlists, and tribute pages), and draws on the author’s field notes. Placing the discussion in the historical context of pre- and post-1979, it presents the Tehran Conference as a focal point where sound, image, and memory converge. In this reading, Hayedeh and Googoosh formulate “Iranianness” as a constructed category in the field of reception, through tone color, modal/device reference, poetic motifs, and star imagery, allowing dispersed communities to narrate nostalgia, authenticity, and political sentiment.
