Jaaye shomaa khaali I was with two friends a couple of nights ago, both of them are big into music. Arash said a friend of a friend or one of his friends’ cousins had been a prisoner of war in Iraq.
Our POW happened to be a Beatles fan. He changed Yellow Submarine‘s lyrics into Persian and taught it to other Iranian POWs in the camp — without telling them it is a Beatles song (many soldiers were religious and it was best not to tell them this is Western Pop music).
The song became a hit. During group exercises the POWs would sing it out loud. One day someone became suspicious: He had heard the song before and it finally dawned on him that it was the Beatles. And the secret was out.
I heard this story and it blew my mind how things travel from one culture to the other from the mind of Lennon and McCartney, onto records, into the air waves, the passage of decades and onto the lips of Iranian soldiers in an Iraqi camp. Can you say globalization? It’s not all about power and money and domination. It’s also the universal power of love & beauty.
