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The spectators gathered at London's Barbican center for a concert by celebrated vocalist Mohammad Reza Shajarian gave a spontaneous rendition of the patriotic, anti-Islamic Republic, anthem Ey Iran on Saturday evening, April 3, 2010.

The wildly popular Master Shajarian, a living legend of Iranian classical music, was performing with the Shahnaz Ensemble, under the direction of Majid Derakhshani. The following footage shows the audience singing several lines from Ey Iran...

Ey Iran has never been the national anthem of the country, although it played that de facto role for a few months between the victory of the 1979 revolution and the establishment of the Islamic Republic. Neither the first official anthem of the Islamic Republic, Payandeh Bada Iran (May Iran Be Everlasting), with its religiously militant tones -- Our helper is the hand of God/He is our guide in this battle./Under the shadow of the eternal Qoran/May Iran be everlasting! -- nor the current anthem adopted in 1990 after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with its elegiac references to the Imam (Khomeini) and the martyrs of the revolution, have ever enjoyed the popularity of Ey Iran.
 

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