As the U.S. war with Iran continues, Iranian-Americans in Michigan said they’re focused on finding a space for common humanity and connection to their heritage.
Negar Dena Afazel was raised in Tehran before moving to Michigan. She’s the founder and leader of the Kalamazoo Violin Choir, and an accomplished violin soloist herself.
“I would like to speak as an Iranian woman, a human, and an artist. I want to say how utterly I am appalled by the recent rhetoric regarding my people and my heritage and my culture,” she said.
Afazel said it’s been an unimaginable time for immigrants from Iran in the past few months. And Afazel, like many others, still has friends and family in Iran.
On Easter, President Donald Trump threatened Iran with "hell" if the country did not open the Strait of Hormuz, a key corridor for oil shipment off Iran's southern coast. And this week, he warned Iran that a “whole civilization will die.” The U.S. and Iran later agreed to a two-week ceasefire.
Afazel said the conflict’s pushed her to make her voice heard. “As an artist, my work will no longer be just about, obviously, aesthetics or just the music itself, per se. It's going to be a refusal, an act of refusal to be silenced,” she said.
“Seeing this aggression becoming so normalized, it's very difficult to see, but at the same time, as an artist, it's a push for me to not be indifferent,” Afazel continued.
The next two weekends, Afazel will lead a choir performance meant to connect people and emphasize shared humanity during a time of war. The upcoming performances on April 11 and April 18 are called “A Conversation Through Us.” Negar and a vocalist will assume the roles of different women throughout history, focusing on Iranian womanhood.
“In an era that we live in defined by bold distances of digital screens, war, or separation, our personal stories are at risk of becoming mere consumable data,” she said. “So this performance is a reclamation of those stories.”
Afazel said the performance meant to remove barriers between the performance artist and the audience. “This is an invitation to stop observing, to start participating in a collective reflection on what it means to be human and an individual today in our world,” she said.
Afazel was a guest on Stateside.
