Cabaret Tehran

My young adult novel, The Authentics, opens and closes with raucous Persians parties, in this case Sweet Sixteen parties. It was fun letting people in on these events because Persians really know how to throw a party. But since I can’t get you an invite to a Persian sweet sixteen, this is a performance space with music and festivities. Wednesday night is karaoke night—Persian karaoke. When you go to a karaoke place, you have a million selections of English songs and maybe 10 songs in Spanish. And in LA, there’s a lot of karaoke in Koreatown. But it’s pretty rare to get karaoke where you’ll find people singing in Farsi.