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TEHRAN -- Setareye Qotbi (Polaris), an all-female Iranian pop band, will appear again to perform concerts at Tehran’s Vahdat Hall on September 4 and 5.
“We spent three years getting authorization [from the Culture Ministry] to perform the concerts,” band leader Bahareh Ilchi, who is also the pianist and harpist of the band, told the Persian service of Hanaronline on Tuesday.
“We aim to show that Iranian women are also able to work in this field,” she added.
The band, which is composed of five singers and 12 musicians, will perform a repertoire of Persian, English, French, Arabic, and Hindi songs during the performances.
Ilchi said that her band is the first all-female Iranian pop group to perform live in concert in Iran since the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979.
Female pop singers previously performed their concerts with recorded music, she added.
Ilchi established the band in 2009 with a number of graduates from music academies in Tehran.
“[For legal reasons] it was not possible for the members to learn to play the drums and electronic instruments at the academies,” she said and added that she asked her colleagues to learn the instruments in private courses that some musicians hold in Iran.
“It took three years for the players to reach an acceptable level, and then we began our activities,” she explained.
In Iran, only females are allowed to attend concerts performed by female singers.
MMS/YAW/HG
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