“Baraye” (“For…”) is a 2022 power ballad by Iranian singer-songwriter Shervin Hajipour. Widely referred to as “the anthem” of the protests, the song was inspired by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian woman who was arrested for allegedly wearing her hijab improperly and whose death in police custody was alleged to have been caused by severe beating by religious morality police officers. Amini’s death sparked massive global protests and became a symbol for freedom in Iran. The slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom”, which was used in the song’s lyrics, became a rallying cry during the protests.
Hajipour wrote each verse of the lyrics based on a separate tweet. The resulting text touches upon several issues, including low life satisfaction, the rights of women, children, refugees, and animals, environmental concerns, recession and poverty, theocracy and outdated social and religious taboos, militarism and political corruption, local corruption, freedom of speech, and the government’s hostility against other countries.
The song was released on September 28, 2022 on Hajipour’s Instagram account. It was taken down from the platform less than 48 hours later, following Hajipour’s arrest by the authorities on September 29. It received about 40 million views during that time. Hajipour was forced to remove the song from his social media platforms by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’s security agents shortly after his arrest. The arrest sparked reactions internationally. On October 4, 2022, Hajipour was released on bail “so that his case can go through the legal process,” according to Mohammad Karimi, prosecutor of the northern province of Mazandaran.
Upon its release, “Baraye” became an instant hit and immediately turned into the unofficial anthem of the uprising. It was widely used during gatherings, from schools and universities to streets, both nationwide and across the globe. It was broadly circulated in social media and foreign TV channels and radio stations as well. The song also served as the backdrop for several other forms of art such as video works, graphic design, and performance art. In November 2022, Roxana Saberi reported the song as “the most viral tune to ever come out of Iran”. Since its release, Baraye has become the single most covered protest song in Iran’s history.
In October 2022 Baraye was performed by Coldplay in their concert at Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires and it was simultaneously aired live in 3,400 cinemas across 81 countries. Before inviting Golshifteh Farahani on stage to provide support with the vocals, Chris Martin, the band lead, said: We’re gonna sing a song that right now is being sung by many people in Iran and many of the Persian diaspora, people who left Iran after the Revolution. And I don’t know if you’ve seen on the news, but young women and young people are fighting for their freedom, for the right to be themselves, and we believe in this band, that everybody should be able to be themselves as long as you don’t hurt anybody else. So, we fully send our love and support to all of those brave young people fighting for freedom. And this is [the] song that they sing which is called Baraye by an artist called Shervin Hajipour, who is in trouble with the authorities just for writing a song about people being free. So, we’re gonna sing his song… You may not know this song, but we’re gonna give it everything because we’re gonna send it with love from here to Iran.
