An Iranian man living in Guelph, and his friends, is using music to show solidarity with Iranian women revolutionaries following the killing of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman in September.
Reza Yazdanpanah and friends will host a concert at the Royal City Mission on Quebec Street Dec. 15.
"For me, when the protest started, I thought 'I'm a musician, so I need to do something,'" he told GuelphToday.
So, Yazdanpanah recorded a song and sent it to international outlets. What happened when his friends in Canada and the United States, among other places, heard about it and the situation?
"They said 'let's do the concert,'" he said.
Yazdanpanah, the only Iranian person among the group, has been touched by the work put in.
"They have been trying, working hard to sing in Farsi," he said. "That's the difference, and the beauty of it.
"Imagine, international people, Canadian people are singing in Farsi, in my modern tongue."
The music being presented will generally be Persian, but they will play Kurdish music and Kurmanji (also called northern Kurdish) music too.
"Mostly, the songs are my compositions, they are the songs that I wrote," Yazdanpanah said.
Mahsa Amini was killed in Iran after she was arrested by morality police for not properly wearing her hijab. Amini collapsed in a detention centre, fell into a coma and died three days later.
Yazdanpanah said this has been happening for nearly 43 years, but this time, something felt different.
"This time, this happened and our people had that anger from years ago," he said. "That spark worked, and triggered the people. People started protesting and everybody joined, and the government started suppressing people badly.
"Thousands of people are imprisoned, hundreds of them are killed. We don't have the exact statistic, but we know that lots of people are getting killed."
No advance tickets are being sold, and admission is by cash donation.
Proceeds from the concert will go to Anmesty International.
Yazdanpanah said there isn't a set financial goal, as the concert is more about raising awareness.
