Salam Doostan En mosahebeheye Shahrzad Sepanlou dar Radio (The World) hast ke dar Tarikh July 2003 enjam dadeh East va dar rabteh ba Ahang (Azadi) mibashad Hatman bekhanid va lezat bebarid. As we told you earlier, reports from Iran say disturbances have broken out in Tehran. Large crowds of protestors in the Iranian capital were marking the fourth anniversary of student riots.

Many Iranians have escaped the cultural repression that the country's Islamic rulers have imposed since 1979. We learn about one Iranian-born pop singer who'se now plying her trade in Los Angeles.

Shahrzad Sepanlou wears big earrings and once in a while frosted lipstick. She's not your average counter-revolutionary. But Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution made her one.

Sepanlou: "When the revolution happened, and when things changed and pop music became illegal and female singing became illegal in Iran. Well that really limits a lot of things."

Especially if you're a pre-teen with a passion for pop....

Sepanlou: "I loved Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Wham. When I was 11, 12 years old, Michael Jackson rocked my world, so...(laughs)"

Sepanlou and her friends in the Islamic Republic had to buy their Western pop on the black market. The music was their salvation.

Sepanlou: "That's what gave all of us, me and all my friends that gave us the energy and hope to just foreget about what we were going through at that point. just get together, close the door and just blast the music and have a really good time to it."

A track from an album due out next month has undercurrents of the Middle East. But it also shows that Sepanlou had been listening to a lot of Madonna in Iran and itching to leave the country.

Sepanlou: "Around '84, '85, it was getting so difficult. There was so much I wanted to do. For me back then it dressing the way I wanted, or listening to the music I wanted. You know as a kid this is very important for you. If it was 98 degrees we had to wear pants and socks and scarves and you know the thick dress. I had had really enough."

Now that she lives in Los Angeles, Sepanlou flouts the restrictions from her past life. In one of her music videos, Sepanlou superimposes herself over local footage of Iran. She seems to be--impossibly--singing her song "Mirdamad" in public, right there on the streets of Tehran. The video became a hit with Iranians watching satellite TV.

Sepanlou: "It's very lifelike. Some people were like, whoa, were you really in Tehran? But obviously you couldn't be because you're not wearing a scarf."

Sepanlou:"That song is a very nostalgic song. Directly translating one line it says that in 50 years, Mirdamad Boulevard, which is a popular street in Tehran, that that street will think of us, but it will think of us in better days. We hope that it's not in 50 years, that it will be sooner!"

Her father Mohammad Ali Sepanlou wrote Miradamad. He's a well-known poet in Iran. His verses also feature in a song on Shahrzad's new album.

The song is called Azadi, Persian for "freedom". It's a word that's inevitably political in Iran. So Sepanlou says her father opted for some strategic symbolism when he wrote Azadi.

Sepanlou: "The lyrics to Azadi, it really is talking about a little bird. And this little bird is the Iranian people who have gone through so much who have either migrated or are in Iran still. And this little bird, it's asking, this bird, to sing a song, to sing about freedom."

Sepanlou: "It also says you little bird, you're carrying this jewel in your mouth. And the jewel again is symbolic for our culture and our heritage and our experiences and our memories. It's basically saying you have this, so sing it. Show it to the world until we can be free again."

Sepanlou recorded Azadi last month, just as thousands of students started demonstrating in Iran. While she sang it in the LA studio, she says she thought of them. And the chant of 'azadi' felt more relevant than ever. Ba Tashakor Ali Yazdanijoo