The Social Life of Recent Street Music in Tehran as an Urban Phenomenon A Qualitative Study of Newly Formed Types of Street Music through Life Story

Street Music is an urban phenomenon. In this regard, to understand it’s meaning as a social interaction, it is necessary to study it’s music producers correlation to the city as a context for social production. In Tehran, with a mixed cultural structure, a new type of street music has formed which is different from it’s precedents. In this newly formed street music, apart from being an urban phenomenon, in the modern sense, it is also a kind of street art, which is unique and requires technical skills. It should be taken into consideration that the transitional relation of this newly formed street music, which in this paper we will refer to as Recent Type, with it’s precedent type, requires further study. This article, which starts with defining conditions of existence of Recent Type and ends with reflexive analysis of collected data through life story, is an attempt to find an answer for this question that “is there any correlation between the Recent Type’s street music and that of Precedent Type’s?” In other words, is Recent Type’s street music a transition from Precedent Type? The results of this research show that, there are deep and fundamental differences between these two types; Attempts at individualization, audience and music centered performances, professional music experiences and showing resistance to pity and contempt in Recent Type, are all examples of the fundamental differences between these two types of street music in Tehran.