Bloody end for Iranian rockers seeking musical freedom in US

For their music they had risked the wrath of Iran’s government, practicing American-style rock in makeshift soundproof studios and performing it in underground clubs and parking lots, despite the threat of fines, detention or arrest. Growing up together in Tehran, they had found a sound: part punk, part garage rock, part their own invention.

The Yellow Dogs, as the four Iranian musicians were known, played in the shadows until 2009, when they appeared in a film about Iran's underground music scene that garnered international attention. The next year, they left for the United States, finding their way to Brooklyn, where their tidy house became a hub for fellow musicians and Iranians.

Hailed as countercultural heroes in Iran, they were a few musicians among many in Brooklyn, working day and night to stay afloat, playing in basements and lofts until they scored better gigs. And then, suddenly, in the early hours of yesterday morning, two of them and another musician were dead - shot by another Iranian musician who then killed himself.

While the precise motive was unclear, it seemed that money, distrust and discord sown amid a tight fraternity of Iranian rock artists were to blame. If the Yellow Dogs had begun to find success in Brooklyn - they were playing at venues like the Music Hall of Williamsburg and Brooklyn Bowl - the gunman, Ali Akbar Mohammadi Rafie, had joined his fellow Iranians in Brooklyn only to struggle. Though he had left Iran as part of another band, the Free Keys, who stayed at the Yellow Dogs' house when they arrived in New York in 2011, his relations with both bands had frayed.

While they continued to live in Brooklyn, he had moved to Queens. There were accusations that he had stolen money from the Free Keys, who forced him to leave the band last year, said John J. McCarthy, the New York Police Department’s chief spokesman. He was in the US on a temporary worker visa.

Rafie had tried to rejoin the group, only to be rebuffed, McCarthy said. "He's upset that he's not in the band," he said. The outlines provided by the police of the gunman's march are chilling. Rafie climbed to the Yellow Dogs' house across adjacent roofs, McCarthy said. On one, investigators found an empty guitar case, which they believe was used to transport the assault rifle he used in his attack. He found his way to a third-floor landing of the home. There, he fired once through a window into a living room, striking and killing Ali Eskandarian, 35, an Iranian-American singer, songwriter and writer who had been living in the apartment above the Yellow Dogs.

Rafie then climbed inside, found Arash Farazmand, 28, the Yellow Dogs' drummer, in his bedroom and opened fire, fatally shooting him. His brother, Soroush Farazmand, 27, the band's guitarist, was in his second-floor bedroom, on his bed and pecking away at his laptop. Rafie burst in and shot him in the chest, killing him.

Shots appeared to have also been fired down a hallway and into a second-floor room, striking Sasan Sadeghpourosko, 22, another resident, in the shoulder and elbow. On the third floor were a man and a woman, members of the Coast Guard who had rented a room for Veterans Day events, and Pooya Hosseini, another Iranian musician from the Free Keys. Rafie kicked in the door, and he and Hosseini, a former bandmate, struggled over the rifle. Several shots went off. Unhurt, Hosseini fled, and Rafie headed to the roof, where he shot himself in the head.

The other members of the Yellow Dogs, Koory Mirz, the bassist, and Siavash Karampour, the lead singer, known as Obash, were not there at the time. Before fleeing for the US in 2010, the four bandmates belonged to Tehran's "small but crazy" underground club scene, according to a State Department cable written in 2009 and later released by WikiLeaks.

They told US officials that they were drawn to American music because it “spoke to them more viscerally about conditions they faced in Iran than traditional Persian music did.”

The Free Keys, which Rafie had joined as a bassist, left Iran to join their friends in the Yellow Dogs in 2011. In their Brooklyn home, at 318 Maujer St, the Yellow Dogs occupied the lower apartment and a rotating group of Iranian friends and acquaintances, including Eskandarian, lived in the upstairs apartment. The residents saw themselves as an artists’ collective, holding house parties with of-the-moment music and cheap beer for musician friends and hosting exhibitions of friends’ artwork. Sadeghpourosko’s artwork covered the walls of the living room, which the Yellow Dogs used as a practice space.

Humble and eager to learn, they arrived early to gigs in their van and stayed late, mixing with fans. And though they sometimes spoke Farsi to one another and a few of their songs had politically potent lyrics, on stage they were like any indie band. “When you close your eyes, you just listen to the music, they sound very much like a regular band,” except for the “exotic” vocals, said Jify Shah, the owner of Cameo Gallery, where the band often played.

Their house had also become something of a hub for Brooklyn's Iranian expatriates, who often received invitations from the band members to come over for Iranian food, said Rahill Jamalifard, a member of another Iranian band.

At first, it seemed that the Free Keys would slip into Brooklyn's music scene as easily as the Yellow Dogs had; they shared a rehearsal space and a manager, Ali Salehezadeh, who hoped the Free Keys' story of music under political duress would resonate as the Yellow Dogs' had. But it soon became clear that the band needed work, a friend of the band said, and that the Free Keys liked to party hard. They lacked the Yellow Dogs' entrepreneurial spirit and ambition, the friend said.

Those in the know believed the Yellow Dogs were ascendant, ready for a national tour or even a record deal. “Everyone knows it’s only a matter of time and the Yellow Dogs are going to be huge,” said Ishmael Osekre, a Ghanaian musician who had booked the band for several shows. “That is why my heart is so broken - the idea that you left friends and family and love, and then for it to end in the way that it has, is just so unfair.”

New York Times