Googoosh
Among the most notable of popular music superstars from West Asia is Googoosh. Born Faegheh Atashin (b. 1951) in Tehran (Iran), Googoosh began performing with her father at an early age. The duo performed most often in cabaret clubs and for public programs and festivals, and their act was a mixture of acrobatics, dancing, and singing. She acted in many films throughout the 1960s and ’70s and was regularly featured on Iranian television, singing her latest recordings. Indeed, her fame was so widespread throughout Iran in the 1970s that people joked about hearing the name “Googoosh” as often as they heard the word “hello.” Googoosh’s music remains popular within the country as well as among exiled Iranians nostalgic for their homeland. Her music represents an idealized past when Iran was on the brink of attaining international recognition as a first-world nation and global power. Freedom and prosperity were the expectations for the 1979 revolution, but instead the government instituted strict cultural and political edicts that discouraged many and spurred large numbers of Iranians to leave the country.