Neon Echoes in Exile: How Iran’s Diaspora Pop Thrived in Tehrangeles

For as long as humans have been singing, painting, and creating art, time away from home has catalyzed some of Earth’s most celebrated masterpieces, even an artist’s greatest work. In more extreme periods away, like during war or exile, navigating adversity in a new environment not only amplifies emotional creativity but reanchors an artist to home through creation. On the other side of the headphones, for listeners pushed abroad themselves, this music becomes more than nostalgia. It becomes a lifeline back to a home they can no longer physically touch. 

A compelling case could be made that both periods of extreme adversity and the new frontiers that follow foster deeper connectivity, creativity, and a more lived existence from which more powerful art emerges. From Bob Marley’s London years to Bowie in Berlin, Paul Simon in South Africa, and Paul Bowles in Morocco, time away has fueled countless creatives. In 13th century Konya, exiled from his native Balkh, Rumi penned the Masnavi, his most celebrated poetic work. Centuries later, exiled in France for very different reasons in very different decades, Kandinsky realized Compositions IX (1936) and X (1939), defining symbols of his late period, and Nina Simone recorded Fodder on My Wings (1982), an album shaped by the volatility of her years abroad. 

Within this piece, we endeavor a more modern, grander, neon tale of exile and music that traces a vast diaspora born into one of the world’s most consequential and historically rich civilizations, displaced from a country transformed overnight. From the twilight of Imperial Iran, Tehran’s oil-lit ascendancy of the late 1970s was reborn afresh under the sunny and decadent hills of Los Angeles and 1980s American excess. 

With the November vinyl release of Tehrangeles Vice, record label and archival collective Discotchari reanimates a rebellious era when exiled Iranian artists in Los Angeles fused nostalgia and creativity to not only create some notably striking blends of electro, synthpop, glam rock, and disco with Iranian melodies, but also soundtracked a cultural resistance that still challenges the systems of the Islamic Republic ideology in 2025. 

With insights from Iranians in the United States, Iran, and across Europe, we trace how the music continues to link a far reaching community across different worlds, and engage an entirely new global audience of listeners.

A Single Line of Latitude Birthing Many Lines of Music

If you were to trace a line from Tehran along the 35th parallel, it would pass almost directly through Los Angeles. Latitudinally, the City of Angels falls squarely within the core band that defines Iran’s geographical and cultural core, clustered by the political and economic capital in the north, Shiraz, the cultural capital known as the City of Poets, Wine, and Roses in the south, and Isfahan centrally, regarded as the most celebrated site of classical Iranian architecture.

With Khomeini’s February Revolution in ‘79, that parallel took on an entirely new meaning, as California, and especially Los Angeles, became the preferred refuge for exiled Iranians globally. Drawn by a not dissimilar climate, established émigré networks, a booming California economy, and the pull of its renowned university system (in which over fifty thousand Iranian students were already enrolled pre-revolution), the city became the diaspora hub that today hosts more than half a million Iranian Americans.

For musicians, the pull was even stronger. Tehrangeles, as it became known, offered the creative machinery that had vanished at home, with recording studios, live music venues abuzz, and dance clubs right alongside the massive TV & film biz. The largest Iranian student population anywhere outside of Iran added energy and an audience, creating conditions gnarly ripe for fresh music to form, smack in the early chapters of a New Wave Era sweeping the globe, marked by experimentation and bold edges.

As pop music and female voices were silenced in Iran, artists fled westward and Tehrangeles emerged as the undisputed glamorama capital of Iranian pop, radiating big hair, pastel power suits, sequins, and the gloriously gaudy XL shoulder pads that ruled the era. Iranian stars du jour like Dariush Eghbali, Ebi, Shahram and Shahbal Shabpareh, Andy, Moein, among others set up shop in Southern California, using clandestine cassette tapes, VHS videos, compact discs and even satellites to reach vast numbers of listeners worldwide from the early 1980s. And the size of the community they speak to today is enormous, a reach that now extends to more than ninety million Iranians along with another five million across the global diaspora.

Diaspora Pop Guardians 

For Zachary Asdourian, an Armenian with family roots in Iran, and his Armenian partner, Anais Gyulbudaghyan, their shared heritage and the experience of living within two diasporas shaped by loss and reinvention define the deeply personal project. For Asdourian, who started in the music biz at William Morris Endeavor assisting tour booking agents while also cutting his teeth as an A&R talent scout, the pandemic pushed him to build his own record label and shift from chasing new talent to curating the musical world that shaped him. 

In conversations with Rolling Stone MENA, Asdourian stresses that, “If we don’t take responsibility for preserving and cataloguing our own culture, others will shape the narrative for us. A reality written across both Armenian and Iranian history.”

Gyulbudaghyan, who brings a perspective from the other side of the booth, so to speak, as a DJ in Armenia and Los Angeles, rounds out their duo from the talent side. Her experience carving out her own unique style while pioneering Yerevan’s electronic music scene as a female artist adds a dynamic and essential dimension to the collection. In fact, her contribution is notable and thematically important, as the ensemble rightfully celebrates the presence of female singers whose voices were banned under the Islamic Republic yet remained central to the Iranian diaspora music scene

Gyulbudaghyan, who goes by PAWS behind the DJ booth, explains that “including powerful women’s voices was essential, not only to honor the genuine talent but to challenge a regime that has tried to silence them.” Adding that “Although the Islamic Republic today has a domestic pop industry and the local ban on Tehrangeles media has somewhat weakened, the public performance and broadcast of women’s voices is still seriously outlawed, and interactions between men and women in public spaces continue to be policed.”

By immersing in the diaspora club night scene in Los Angeles, the duo witnessed how Armenian, Iranian and other expatriate communities used music to hold on to identity, especially with the weight of both the Armenian Genocide and the Islamic Iranian Revolution. Asdourian describes Tehrangeles Vice not as just nostalgia but as a cultural front line. Cassette tapes made this possible because they were cheap, portable, and impossible to control, carrying banned songs back into Iran and keeping secular culture alive across borders. In fact, cassette tapes were also used as a medium by the Ayatollah to circulate his speeches across Iran during his exile.

Working from more than ten thousand recordings, CDs from diaspora shops in Los Angeles alongside cassette dubs that had traveled from 1980s California into Tehran’s underground circuits and even on to Yerevan’s after markets before resurfacing decades later, the curative effort was exhaustive in both quantity and geographic scope.

With these same cassettes as a touchstone, the couple explores this music on their monthly internet radio show, Silk Road Secret Agents, tracing the sounds and artists that moved through Armenia, Iran, and the greater Silk Road region connecting Asia, Africa and Europe. 

Building on that wider lens, Discotchari also compiled more than four hours of their favorite recordings from Taraneh, the foundational Los Angeles label of the era, into a Spotify playlist, opening the window further and underscoring the breadth that informs the compilation.

Don Johnson and the Professor

With the album’s curation and the tracks ultimately selected, the intent was never to create a greatest hits Iranian pop collection, Asdourian explained. Rather than centering on the familiar six-eight rhythm that dominated commercial Iranian pop or even the most popular tracks, the couple looked more for the one or two odd, more experimental songs on each cassette, the ones that incorporated more adventurous rogue, modern, even Western influences of the day. A distinctly New Wave exercise if you will.

Further unique, the Miami Vice fusion captures the charged, nocturnal 80s mood Asdourian heard coursing through Tehrangeles’ musical veins, a mix of color and gloss with a cinematic cool that mirrors the flavor of the music and highlights the illicit circumstances in which these songs were released and distributed.

But the vinyl release is notably more than just a compilation. It is also shaped by Dr. Farzaneh Hemmasi, the ethnomusicologist whose writings on Iranian popular music have been foundational in the field. Her accompanying album notes give non Iranian and Iranian listeners alike the historical and cultural frame needed to understand what these songs meant, and still mean.

She traces the dynamics that built Tehrangeles, pre-revolution pop, and motrebi, a particularly unique Iranian form of entertainment which occurs on the streets, at festivals or weddings that mixes music, dark humour, satire and improv. She also delves into the way cassette culture carried a forbidden identity across borders. As a supplemental medium, the way it wraps living history around sonic compositions to give the music an added layer of historical depth is potent and artistically successful. 

Dr Hemmasi explains that,”Tehrangeles’ pop music is a paradox. On the one hand, it was banned within Iran and its artists were exiled. On the other, it was ubiquitous for several generations of Iranian listeners in and outside the country precisely because there was no domestic Iranian popular music industry allowed.” She adds: “These exiles had a monopoly on Iranian listeners precisely because of the ban. But as exiles making politically and morally rejected pop music, these same musicians are not a respected part of official Iranian music history, and because their music has always been oriented towards fellow Persian speakers, their music and careers are not part of mainstream American music history, either. ”

With Dr Hemmasi’s archival foundation, that same sense of depth carries into the sound itself, with a brilliant remastering by the multiple Grammy award winning team at Osiris Studio. Paired with original cassette covers, full lyrics and translations, the Tehrangeles Vice set provides a pleasant entry point for new listeners. Jointly the layers make the record not just a remastering, but something that reaches Iranians who lived through the era, a younger generation encountering it anew, and new listeners discovering Iranian music altogether.

You can hear the decade unfold as the first vinyl moves chronologically from 1983 into the late hours of the era. The album opens with Shahrokh’s “Man va Tou,” which ropes in this non Farsi speaker as my personal favorite, bringing a stringed Iranian classical touch over a discoish, very vibey base that progressively layers in dramatic beats with momentum. For this song and the genre overall, the combination of traditional Iranian string instruments like the tar, setar, santur, and kamancheh paired with electronic synths works well.

Other standouts on the first album include The Shahram Shabpareh Shohreh Solati duet “Ghesmat,” which brings a Gloria Estefan vibe, with a strong female vocal and flashes of energetic brass. From there, Aldoush’s “Vay Az In Del” slides into the most distinctive Miami Vice vibe on the album, with a confident electric guitar, a commanding riff and a very sassy sax.

The second album begins at the debut of the decade and spans three years. There is a markedly more 90s stylistical shift with more percussion, more female presence, and a more earnest tone. Among the ladies, Delaram’s Gharibeh is a highlight, with frilly flute elements intermixed with samba-like crescendos.

Track ten, Black Cats’ “Rhythm of Love,” the only fully English song on the vinyl, leans hard into the era with cringey 90s lyrics, including a provocative back and forth between the male vocal and female moans. Leila Forouhar’s “Hamsafar” feels a bit Janet Jackson early days, spunky and beatastic. The album rounds out with Hassan Shojaee’s “Nazi Joon,” which playfully headlines a recorder paired with lengthy keyboard and vocal runs.

The Music Lives on in its People

Along with the team who compiled the album, Rolling Stone MENA connected with a wide range of Iranians the world over, along with key figures in the music industry. For the Iranians we spoke to, whose ages, professions, and upbringing varied widely, several distinctive recurring sentiments rang through when asked what the music of that era evokes for them. 

Nostalgia, pride, memories of family gatherings, and rebellion were the feelings that consistently rang through. Above all, there was a striking sense of pride in the music, a depth of attachment that felt uniquely Iranian with a weight and reverence perhaps unmatched.

The Activist
Paris based, Hamid Assodollahi is a political activist and human rights advocate based in France who works closely with the National Council of the Iranian Resistance (CNRI) and other organizations to advance a Europe wide push for accountability and democratic change in Iran. Assodollahi notes, “I have always appreciated singers like Viguen, as well as the composers Mohammad Shams and Ando. They are among the artists who have supported our movement since the 80s and 90s. Shams and Ando even became members of the CNRI.” All of these artists spent extended time living or producing in the LA music scene. 

The Designer
Parsi Thomas, an Iranian fashion designer from Isfahan who now lives between Iran and London, descends from Qajar and Safavid roots, including his great great grandfather Naghn Ali Beig, the first Iranian Ambassador to the United Kingdom. The ensemble struck a deeply emotional chord for him, stirring nostalgia and childhood memories, especially as a devoted fan of female Iranian singers whose voices shaped his earliest musical world, from the avant garde Suzan Roushan to the poetic resonance of Sattar’s “Gole Pooneh,” a song he closely associates with Empress Farah Pahlavi. “Overall, I think the playlist also shows how 80s and 90s Iranian pop used upbeat rhythms as a brief escape from the turmoil of The Revolution and the Iran Iraq war,” explains Thomas.

The Consultant
For Aryan Vatanian, a consultant born in Tehran, raised in Toronto, and now based in NY, the collection resonated deeply and his grasp of the era and its artists was immense and very personal. After his family escaped Iran in the 90s, one of his most vivid memories was attending Googoosh’s first major concert in Toronto after her twenty one year ban from performing by the government. The memory of that night stayed with him. “The music gives me confidence, empowers me, it is joyful at family events, weddings, and get-togethers, with a spirituality that takes me back to childhood.” Googoosh, a strikingly graceful and elegant singer whose presence shaped an entire generation, later spent considerable time in the Los Angeles scene.

The Professor
For Dr Farzaneh Hemmasi, the music and its history were so stirring that she built her academic career around the subject, now serving as Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Toronto and author of Tehrangeles Dreaming (2020). She was drawn to the field by the way Iranian pop in exile existed as a vessel for memory, longing, and identity, shaping how displaced Iranians understood themselves across borders. For her, Iranian pop first registered as a joyful connective force, occasion driven and dance filled, a feeling she remembers from dancing at a cousin’s wedding in LA, with family in North Dakota, and in Iran as well.

The Actress
For Geneva based comedienne and theater actress Aroosha Biti, the music is nostalgic yet quirky, defined by the eccentricities of its style and firmly tied to a generation not her own. She prefers other genres of music like blues, jazz and classical, but these songs still carry emotional weight. Like everyone Rolling Stone MENA spoke with, she connects this era of music to family gatherings.

The Movie Sound Recordist
For Tehran native Maziar Raphael Razaghi, the music of the era shaped his family, social life, and career. Growing up in Iran in the 80s, he remembers waiting for banned cassette tapes and Betamax videos smuggled from Los Angeles, which his family played on an illegal machine.

The music was also deeply personal as before the revolution his parents had socialized with many of the stars who later fled Iran, and these tapes were proof they were alive, creating, and still connected. They showed that music could continue outside Iran and offered hope that liberty and freedom were possible. He believes the Islamic Government lost cultural authority because of this music, and he recalls the importance of watching his parents help circulate it.

Professionally, he eventually left Iran for Paris after graduating from the Film and Television Sound School of Iran, where he built a career as a sound recordist, editor, designer, and teacher. In 2016, he became the first gay Iranian man to be officially married in France.

A Scattered Nation Never Stopped Singing Together

As the voices we gathered echo across continents, decades, and generations, one track on Tehrangeles Vice offers a clear window into what exile imprinted on this music and on the people who carried it. With Track 7, “Khaak,” performed by Sattar, the revered pre-revolution vocalist who rebuilt his life and career in Los Angeles, the experience is distilled with complete clarity. “We never get used to the pain of exile,” he sings, admitting that “here where I am I have no peace,” and that “oh what things I have lost, their pain always remains in my heart.” 

Yet in Sattar’s voice, the very ache of exile becomes a source of strength, linking a scattered people through music that never kept them too far from home.