#salome mc

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Salome MC: the first female rapper of Iran

Salome MC is an Iranian musician, record producer, peace activist & multimedia artist. She is the first female rapper of Iran, and the…

Intermittently, I will post new artist profiles at The Kitchen Sink Approach, and across my social media. I’d like to start with Salome MC, a brilliant, powerful, and compassionate human who is creating positive change through her art, music, music production and community building.

I met Salome in October 2020 at the Rockland Residency, where we, along with a grip of beautiful creatives in various mediums were awarded three weeks in the Rockland Woods to work on our respective art.

Salome MC is an Iranian musician, record producer, peace activist and multimedia artist. She is the first female rapper of Iran, and the first woman to compose and produce hip-hop music in her home country. She holds a B.A. in Design from Iran and M.A. in Audio/Visual Arts from Japan. In 2016, Salome moved to Washington State where she has been working as a HipHop educator for underserved youth. She is also a peace activist who advocates for better relations between Iran and the U.S., and is on the advisory board of Code Pink, a pro-peace women’s grassroots organization. She has published essays on the topic of militarism, white gaze, and motherhood. Salome is the recipient of 2009 Female Change Maker Award, 2010 MEXT scholarship and 2018 Artist Trust Fellowship Award, and her work has been featured in the Guardian, Time Magazine and MTV.

What are you working on now?

“Seven Climes”, a genre-bending music compilation I am producing as a nod to the complex heritage I carry as a recent Iranian immigrant to the United States. It will feature hip-hop instruments fused with folk/traditional/classical Iranian music from seven different regions of the country with their distinct culture, language and music forms. “Identity” as a theme will be at the core of this album, as I am collaborating with seven rappers from the respective regions who rap/sing in a language, dialect or accent other than standard Farsi, which is the official, national language known by all citizens.

What art in the world are you excited about right now (any medium/genre)?

The first three episodes of The Expanse’s 5h season just dropped and I am very excited to binge watch them tonight. Ever since I read the Farsi translations of all Jules Verne books as a ten year old, I’ve been a huge SciFi fan.

What have you learned in 2020 that is informing your work going forward?

That we are fragile. The world we’ve built is very fragile. How damn lucky we are that this virus isn’t really THAT bad? We could’ve been wiped out. And there’s a teeny tiny virus out there that CAN wipe us all out.

Is there anything else you would like to add

If you’re reading this, drop everything and make yourself a warm, comforting cup of tea.

How can people support your work/ projects?

For more, visit Salome MC’s website: www.salomemc.com, and follow her work on Instagram.

[reedodaemcee-blog]

About Me.

It is 2018, and rap is no longer that secret guilty pleasure that kids listen in on the radio when their parent’s are not around; According to Complex in September 2017, it could be said that with rappers such as Tyler the Creator, A$AP Rocky, and Chance the Rapper are all part of the new cultural vanguard.

However, there’s another side to this hip-hop exchange; female emcees. The 90s were indeed ~All That~ for millennials before the hipster movement became a thing, but especially for female rappers such as Lauryn Hill, Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliot, & Queen Latifah, which Billboard explains in March 2014, have not only shown that ladies can forge their mettle as wordsmiths but also changed public perception of black culture for the better.

Back to 2018; it is the era of comebacks and new beginnings, a hotbed of musical intellectuality. These upcoming female rappers grew up feeling the boom-bap of hip-hop, bopping most likely to Tupac and Biggie; most likely, many of these rappers also grew up under homes that were proud of their ethnic identities. The result of this is the lovechild of Eastern History and Western Storytelling; this new wave of emcees bring alive the culture they grew up in by passing on these stories to a generation of youth that may not know what life was like on the other side of the history books.

[Reedo DA emcee] is a blog that seeks to chronicle the musical journey of these ethnic-minority female emcees such as Raja Kumari, HeeSun Lee, Salome MC, and Ruby Ibarra by juxtaposing usage of syntax, discography, and social media (such as twitter, IG, and Facebook) compared to more mainstream female rappers such as Cardi B, and Nicki Minaj. At least once per week, this post will compare at least 2 of the former mentioned to at least one of the latter-mentioned artists.

Several criteria considered to feature these rappers included:

               - ethnicity (at least partially non-white; although could be born in America)

               - At least one social media website (main analsis from FB/IG)

               - personal website

               - featured in at least one news article within the past 5 years

- if they had at least one album/ music video (and if they have more than one, if they have a release within the past 5 years)

- having at least one song that references cultural heritage

 Raja Kumari (therajakumari) – Indian American Songwriter/Rapper based in California. Incorporates Indian classical music with boom-bap/trap beats.

HeeSun Lee (msheesunlee) – Based in the East Coast; combines themes of Korean heritage, adoptee status, motherhood, and her Christian faith, into a style that’s half spoken word, half east coast rap

Salome MC (salomemcee)- Iranian, non-english speaking rapper with leanings to deep, aggressive, and political-leaning lyrics. 

Ruby Ibarra (rubyibarra) – California based rapper with a spoken workd background who can rap in both English and Tagalog (official language of the Philippines). Focuses on cultural heritage and immigration with a 90’s west coast style

Cardi B (iamcardib)– Bronx rapper with an aggressive style who shot to fame thanks to “Bodak Yellow” (2017) and “Finesse (Remix)” (2017); Comparable to Missy Elliot and Jennifer Lawrence in terms of personality and media presence. Recently featured in an alexa super bowl commercial.

Nicki Minaj (nickiminaj) –  Trinidadian-American rapper who rose to prominence from the early 2000s onward. Considered by many to be one of the most influential female rappers within the past decade, she is known for fast raps and outlandish alter ego personalities. Recently released a lipstick collection; as of this writing, people think she is lost as she has not posted on socials as of late.

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Salome MC is credited as Iran’s first (and still one of its few) female rappers. She describes herself as apolitical, writing simply about what comes to her mind. 

“Drunk Shah, Drunk Elder: (Above) talks about the consequences of the Iranian Revolution. “Grown Green on this Land” (Green for the Iranian flag, presumably) was written after the 2009 presidential election crackdowns; it implores the listener to look beyond individual differences, to come together for what really matters, rather than allowing elites to play groups off of each other.

Below is “Price of Freedom,” which is self-explanatory.

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Check Norient for an in-depth artist profile on the fire-breathing First Lady of Iranian hip hop music http://norient.com/en/stories/salome-mc-a-quiet-storm/

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In the context of the new recording project 1+1 by Norient and Sound Development, one of the first female Iranian rappers Salome MC and multilingual rapper Shing02 worked together in Honolulu for one week.

Last summer I was given the unique opportunity to be a contributor for Norient Online Magazine, and created a podcast narrating the collaboration between two talented artists for the 1+1 Project.  The 1+1 team also made an appearance on KTUH FM Honolulu radio station where they shared music, experiences, and their world view.

Read more about the creative process between Iran’s first female rapper Salome MC, and multilingual rapper/ producer Shing02, and peep the media from the week Passenger was conceived.

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Three Rituals of Perdurance Audio and Video by: Salome Mc

Storyteller: Shinichi Kato

We all have rituals of our own to deal with the challenges that life lays upon us. Some live in fear of what's about to come, doing what they can to prevent them, while some live inside an illusion of safety only to find themselves in a ritual do deal with the pain of losses and failures later on. And yet some see life as it is, full of challenges but promises too, full of pleasures hidden in simplicity and full of sufferings coming in complex forms. They don't fear but don't lose sight either, they don't suffer for long but neither will they forget.

Shinichi Kato, tells of his sustainable art of living, a ritual that lasts a lifetime.

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Salome MC, Iran’s First Female Rapper, on Breaking New Ground and Keeping Home in Her Heart

To see more of Salome’s photos from her travels, check out @salomemcee on Instagram. For more music stories, head to Instagram @music.

Salome MC (@salomemcee) was living in Iran and leading a double life. During the day she went to school and had a part-time job. But after hours, she would retreat into her artistic cocoon where she wrote rhymes and rapped. Doing anything outwardly creative in the country is considered risky – the government bristles at the provocative and dangerous. Salome was therefore confined to the shadows, forced to share her work with a small group of collaborators and fans.

“For a long time I really didn’t tell a lot of people,” says the 31-year-old emcee about her music. “I had this whole life with my rapper friends.”

At the time, Iran’s hip-hop scene was non-existent, restricted to Salome and her crew. Today, they’re considered pioneers – the first ever Iranian rappers. But they never set out to make history or change the musical landscape of their country. They were, simply put, just fans of a genre, looking to express their art in new and exciting ways.

“We wanted to see how Persian language worked on [hip-hop],” says Salome. “But we weren’t really thinking it was going to be that [popular] though. We were just people who liked doing it and put it online. Then it really took off. I think people, young people especially, were really thirsty for it. Obviously there was a lot of music in Iran – pop music, traditional music, folk music – but the language we had in hip-hop was a little bit more raw and urban and I think the youth really wanted that.”

Salome first heard rap in 1995. The song was by a Turkish immigrant group from Germany. Soon after, she expanded into the American rap scene, listening to Tupac, Notorious B.I.G. and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, among others. By then, she was already attempting to write rhymes on her own.

A common misconception about Middle Eastern rappers is that they have to rap about geopolitical conflict in their region. Salome opts for something more, though, choosing instead to focus on issues that are less defined by borders than by species and customs. A lot of that comes from her upbringing. The daughter of two journalists, Salome moved around a lot as a kid, making her feel less attached to lands than particular individuals and cultures.

“I try to show that in each country everywhere, people have the same concerns, the same life. I address that a lot,” she says. “Because I traveled a lot, it’s so easy once you get out of that box to see that. People think they are so different – they have this completely different culture, religion and language. It’s easy to demonize them.”

That’s why Salome brings a bit of history with her wherever she goes. Though she currently lives in Japan – she moved there in 2010 on a scholarship – she always makes time for her favorite tea (lemon balm herb) and some kefir cheese (“It’s so good for health”), all the while plotting her next creative project. In addition to her work as a rapper, she is also a video artist, making her own music videos and additional experimental projects.

But the music is what drives her – and as a pioneer and early adopter of hip-hop in her home country, she wants to get her songs out to the people who need them. For Salome carries the additional charge of being known as Iran’s first female emcee, a title she initially avoided: it was nothing more than a label, and didn’t speak to the quality of her work nor the types of things she was interested in. However, she eventually changed her tune.

“For a long time I resisted it, but then I embraced it,” she says. “Right now, no one is really writing down what’s happening. I didn’t want that story to go away because people forget so easily, so I kind of started to use [the label] too.”

But being the first doesn’t always mean being the best. Things move fast. New generations come in and take up the ground broken by previous ones. And while Salome may have much more to accomplish as an artist, she knows how far she’s come and how much she’s already achieved.

“It’s funny because Iranian hip-hop is so young, it’s like 10, 12, 15 years old tops. But already we are the old-school ones.”

– Instagram @music

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#music #EnglishSubs #SalomeMC Salome Mc - Price of Freedom (بهای رهایی) ft. SplytSecond