Amin Gholami, right, dances in Azeri-style as Aydin Kanani plays a Gaval, a large-sized tambourine, in the Gharadagh mountainous area, in northwestern Iran. In the 1980s, Iran's music almost vanished. Music schools went into full recession, police or militias stopped cars to check what passengers were listening to and broke tapes playing pre-revolutionary singers, and clerical institutions even banned music as un-Islamic. But Iran's social life has dramatically changed a decade later, with a landslide victory of former President Mohammad Khatami and with the relaxing of some rigid restrictions on cultural and social activities, including bans on music bands, but Iran has tightened censorship of books, films, and music since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to power.