Across the world, cassette tapes have often carried far more than music, serving as tools of  defiance, memory, and belonging. In Somalia and Somaliland, songs recorded on battered tapes crossed seas and borders, keeping scattered communities connected through poetry and melody. In Palestine, revolutionary anthems slipped through checkpoints and broadcast the sound of resistance where radio could not reach. In Afghanistan, banned voices lived on in bootleg cassettes passed hand to hand, their melodies vehemently resisting the silence imposed upon them.
In Iran, too, the cassette has been used as both a weapon and a refuge: First used by Khomeini to spread his revolutionary sermons, it was reclaimed by Iranian pop artists fighting to…

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