The sounds of classical Persian music used to fill the rooms of the Honiak Music Academy in Tehran: the deft plucking of the setar, the ringing of the santur. It was the pride and joy of Iranian ...

In the 1950s, Younes Dardashti, a Jewish man from Tehran’s Jewish ghetto, became one of Iran’s most celebrated singers. As the country underwent rapid secularization under the Shah, Jewish communities ...