Home› Middle East & Caucasus›Middle East & Anatolia›Iran
Music of Iran
Maqam-based art music, Turkish makam and aşık bards, Persian dastgah and radif, Arabic tarab, Sufi zikr, Kurdish dengbêj and Yemeni oud song.
Sung and searched in Persian. The YouTube button above can run your search in that language.
A brief history
History
Music in Iran, as evidenced by the "pre-Iranian" archaeological records of Elam, the oldest civilization in southwestern Iran, dates back thousands of years. Iran is the birthplace of the earliest complex instruments, which date back to the third millennium BC. A number of trumpets made of silver, gold, and copper were found in eastern Iran that are attributed to the Oxus civilization and date back between 2200 and 1750 BC. The use of both vertical and horizontal angular harps have been documented at the archaeological sites of Madaktu (650 BC) and Kul-e Fara (900–600 BC), with the largest collection of Elamite instruments documented at Kul-e Fara. Multiple depictions of horizontal harps were also sculpted in Assyrian palaces, dating back between 865 and 650 BC.
Popular music
Modern era
In the post-medieval era, musical performances continued to be observed and promoted especially through princely courts, Sufi orders, and modernizing social forces. During the Qajar era (1789–1925), Iranian music was renewed through the development of classical melody types (radif), that is the basic repertoire of Iran's classical music, as well as the introduction of modern technologies and principles from the West. Mirza Abdollah, a prominent tar and setar master and one of the most respected court musicians of the late Qajar era, is considered a major influence on the teaching of classical Iranian music in Iran's contemporary conservatories and universities. Radif, the repertoire that he developed in the 19th century, is the oldest documented version of the seven dastgah system, and is regarded as a rearrangement of the older 12 maqam system. Ali-Naqi Vaziri, a respected player of numerous Iranian and western instruments who studied western musical theory and composition in Europe, was one of the most prominent and influential musicians of the late Qajar and early Pahlavi eras.
Read the full article: Music of Iran Text under CC BY-SA 4.0
Playing now
What Iran is listening to in 2026
Articles
No articles for Iran yet. Save a Markdown file to content/articles/ with
country: Iran in its front matter.
Live radio
Radio from Iran
Music only, no news or talk. Stations that play the local tradition come first, then the most listened. They play in the corner of the page.
Station directory by Radio Browser Streams come from each station's own server.