{"id":630100,"date":"2026-09-28T14:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/630100\/"},"modified":"2026-09-28T14:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-28T14:26:09","slug":"iranian-singer-gola-performs-along-side-nova-survivors-in-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/630100\/","title":{"rendered":"Iranian singer Gola performs along side Nova survivors in Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Golazin Ardestani, an Iranian singer<\/a> based in the UK who is known professionally as Gola, lit up the stage at the opening of the 42nd Haifa International Film Festival on Saturday night when she performed \u201cNew Day Will Rise,\u201d a song inspired by the massacre at the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023<\/a>, with Yuval Raphael, a Nova survivor, who originally sang the song at Eurovision in 2025.<\/p>\n

The duet was one of the highlights of the opening. The next day, Ardestani said, \u201cLast night\u2019s performance was very symbolic for me. \u2026 Yuval\u2019s story is very important, and it\u2019s a story of many people in Israel, and I really love the song because it has a message of hope.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe performed it in four languages: English, French, Hebrew, and Iranian (Farsi), and I really enjoyed this performance. I think our performance shows that we are all human beings and at the end of the day, it doesn\u2019t matter where we come from or what our religion is. It shows that to win, we need to get together and be united and love each other as human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ardestani is also an actress, and she attended last year\u2019s festival with the movie Mortician, in which she starred, and was happy to return this year to sing and serve on the festival\u2019s selection committee.<\/p>\n

Responding to a compliment about the emotional intensity of her performance, the petite, soft-spoken singer, who nevertheless has great stage presence, said, \u201cThank you. I think the stage reveals the truth about a person. For me, it has always raised the question of why women singers cannot occupy that space in Iran.<\/p>\n

\"GOLAZINGOLAZIN ARDESTANI attends the Haifa festival this week. (credit: Courtesy of the Haifa International Film Festival)’I want to convey messages of hope’<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have a microphone and a stage. What you do matters, and the message you communicate matters. If it comes from the heart, it reaches people\u2019s hearts. When I\u2019m onstage, what you see comes from my own life and experiences, both back home and here. I want to convey messages of hope and equality, and encourage people to empower one another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s also why I love theater,\u201d she added. \u201cI\u2019m developing a one-woman show called I\u2019m Not Political. It will be about 90 minutes onstage, telling my story and connecting with the audience. It isn\u2019t a musical, but it will have music. I\u2019ll speak, act, and sing. We\u2019re still developing it, and I hope it will premiere in 2027. I would like to bring it to Israel first \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always felt a strong connection between Iranians and Israelis. But there is a difference between reading about Israel and coming here, meeting people and experiencing its culture, music, and food. Haifa\u2019s festival feels very international. It brings together people from different places and backgrounds to watch films and learn about one another. I feel very fortunate to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an outspoken female singer who is delighted to perform for Israelis<\/a>, she knows her life would be in danger at home in her native Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last time I visited Iran was in 2011. Since then, London has been home, although I travel a great deal and spend time in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is difficult for her to be cut off from her family. Her mother married as a young teen and gave up her dream of becoming a doctor to raise a family, then opened a successful fashion business in two cities, and her father worked in a bank.<\/p>\n

While Ardestani enjoyed her home life, she did not enjoy being required to wear a hijab, which meant she had to curtail her participation in sports from the age of six at school and nine outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou grew up constantly asking yourself what you could do, what was forbidden, and how to get around a rule while staying safe. It was a kind of double life,\u201d she said. \u201cAt school, we also had to line up and chant \u2018Death to America\u2019 and \u2018Death to Israel.\u2019 I questioned why I had to begin my day calling for anyone\u2019s death.\u201d<\/p>\n

She loved music, both traditional Iranian music and Western music, when she was growing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of that [Western] music came into our home secretly. You couldn\u2019t simply buy a Madonna cassette in a store. My older brother and sisters had cassettes of artists such as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey. That was my first exposure to music from outside Iran.<\/p>\n

\u201cLater, satellite television became very important. People could see and hear things they wouldn\u2019t find on national television. Today, people in Iran can hear my music by satellite or through VPNs. Iranian people find a way.\u201d<\/p>\n

She decided to study music in Iran<\/a>.<\/p>\n

She couldn’t study singing as a woman<\/p>\n

\u201cThe male students could study singing, but women could not, so I played piano and other instruments. I joined Orchid, a female pop band formed after the revolution. We toured and sold out venues, but we could perform only for women. There could be no recordings, photographs, or cameras.<\/p>\n

There was supervision, and restrictions on movement and dancing. The audience had to remain seated. Imagine a pop concert like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She recalled the repressive rules that led her to leave Iran. \u201cEven when we had permission to perform, a concert could be canceled for all kinds of reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

She was always curious and questioned what she was told. \u201cI went to different imams and asked them to show me a passage in the Quran that said women couldn\u2019t sing.<\/p>\n

They couldn\u2019t show me one. I see fear behind those decisions: fear of women\u2019s voices, of their ability to reach people, and of the messages music can carry. Music is powerful. Women making music can bring change.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked why she ultimately decided to leave Iran, she said, \u201cI was tired of remaining in the background. I couldn\u2019t grow as a singer or an actor. I had also been arrested many times for things such as my work or walking in the street with a boyfriend. Being arrested is frightening because you don\u2019t know what will happen once they take you into the van.<\/p>\n

\u201cI once struggled to avoid being taken, and my arm was broken. I couldn\u2019t play an instrument for about two months. You don\u2019t know where they will take you, whether you\u2019ll be able to contact your family, or what charge they might bring against you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gola established her own label in UK<\/p>\n

In England, she studied music and received a PhD while building a career as a performer, despite her initial naivete and the obstacles faced by any young female artist in a competitive, male-dominated industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to help other singers who arrived in London without knowing how the industry worked. I established my own label, Zan Recordings. Zan means \u2018woman\u2019 in Farsi. I hope it can help girls and women from different countries and backgrounds make music.<\/p>\n

\u201cI released my own songs and contacted radio and television stations directly. I performed live on Manoto television, which reached Farsi-speaking viewers in Iran and across the diaspora. People began sharing the songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

But her success came at a price. \u201cChoosing to sing publicly in London was one of the hardest decisions I made. I knew it meant I could no longer go back to Iran. But I wanted what I had experienced to serve a purpose. I couldn\u2019t know whether I could change Iran\u2019s future; I could take a step toward freedom and hope others would, too \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat scares me is living without purpose. I don\u2019t want fear to determine what I say or do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ardestani spoke passionately about the sacrifices those protesting the regime have made for freedom.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople went into the streets knowing they could be arrested, tortured, or killed. It\u2019s important for the world to understand that people inside Iran have tried to bring change. When people outside say change must come from within, I want to ask them how they expect people to accomplish that under those conditions. Families may not even be told where an arrested relative is.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said that the number of protesters killed by the regime during two days of widespread protests was even higher than has been reported, and that from what she has heard, as many as 100,000 people were killed for demanding their freedom.<\/p>\n

She admitted that it pained her that many in the West are indifferent to the struggle of Iranians against the regime.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople say, \u2018I\u2019m not political,\u2019 but politics affects their lives \u2013 from the price of milk to what happens to their neighbors. We have to make decisions, or others will make them for us. That is part of what my show, I\u2019m Not Political, is about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hers has been a difficult journey, and she said she hoped that by building a career and speaking out, she could have an impact on the struggle of Iranians protesting their oppression.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to ask myself why I had been born in Iran, because I spent so much of my life fighting for basic rights. Now I value what growing up there taught me: how to find a way forward when something seems impossible. I want to help others feel they can do that, too. \u2026 And I dream of the day when people can fly from Tehran to Tel Aviv.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Golazin Ardestani, an Iranian singer based in the UK who is known professionally as Gola, lit up the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1503,24741,284882,85,87,127873,46,43,1299],"class_list":["post-630100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-culture","tag-haifa","tag-haifa-international-film-festival","tag-il","tag-iran","tag-iranian-dissidents","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-united-kingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}