Iran Music Feature: Rapper Shahin Najafi Responds to Death Threats...With a New Song

Last month Iranian clerics and politicians called for the execution of rapper Shahin Najafi after he released the song "Naqi", invoking Shi'a's 10th Imam to criticise Iranian politics and society. A pro-regime website offered a large bounty for Najafi's death, and 40 authors have promised royalties from their books to his killer.

Najafi, who lives in Germany, has responded to the threats with a new song, "Istadeh Mordan (Our Codewords Are 'Dying Upright')". Translation by EA's Ms Zahra follows the music video:

A cut off head in your hands,
My look at a rotten clock.
With sad, rebellious poems,
And a tired wolf that fears no gun.
With me doubting the essence of being,
With your lonely sorrow when you’re drunk.

My desire for you and smelling you,
And utter tragedy for not seeing you.
A vein destined to be locked up,
Your crime being a scream in the wind.
The story has always a bitter end
For a poet condemned for heresy.

The God of sweet dreams in my book,
And dried sperm on my bed.
Good God of wrath, murder and fatwa,
When for plundered poems I cry.
Call on me to remain a cactus,
Stay with me for singing songs,
Beside you I’ll be a vow to the desert
Because our code word is dying upright.

Tell them our verses were made of blood,
A savagery born of madness.
Tell them that we didn’t surrender,
Tell them that we died upright.

The God of sweet dreams in my book,
And dried sperm on my bed.
Good God of wrath, murder and fatwa,
When for plundered poems I cry.
Call on me to remain a cactus,
Stay with me for singing songs,
Beside you I’ll be a vow to the desert
Because our code word is dying upright.