Roya Arab
Roya Arab (born 1967) is a British musician and archaeologist. Born in Tehran, she is an exile of the Iranian Revolution. Early life and education Roya Arab was born in Tehran, Iran. She attended Maktabe Tarbiat school in Tehran, while also studying at summer schools in Montana, Switzerland, and St Georges in Ascot. After the 1979 revolution she boarded at Ancaster House School in Bexhill-on-Sea, before taking her A-levels at North Westminster Community School. She then completed one year of a copywriting/advertising course. She joined the Institute of Archaeology (UCL) in 2000 to complete an Archaeology BA and Public Archaeology MA and remained as an Honorary Research Associate from 2008 until 2015. She is currently undertaking research into music in Iranian films and what it reveals about society’s attitudes to music and musicianship. In 2020 she was made Associate Member of SMEI and CIS at SOAS, University of London. Musical career Arab learned the craft of singing during jam sessions around London in the early and mid-1990s. She was the first Iranian female to receive a publishing and recording deal from a major Western label, when she was signed as a member of Archive to Island Records in 1994, and