Music and revolution in Afghanistan
War Child Music | 31st October 2007
Tonight I got to enjoy what was a new face of Afghanistan for me.
The boys set up their kit, connected plugs and leads, tuned instruments, fooled around with a little jamming and then lept into their Iranian inspired Afghan funk set.
By the fourth track the drummer was deftly riding a rhythm: standing behind a full Yamaha drum kit, using one hand while holding a can of beer in the other. This was not the Afghanistan I was familiar with.
Smiles were traded among the nine musicians as bass guitar handed over to keyboard, keyboard handed over to bongos, bongos to violin …… Spanish guitar, then a damn accordion (I make it sound wrong, but it worked, it really did), drums, lead guitar, then back to the singer.
Apparently the clarinet and saxaphone were missing. But this did not phase the brooding middle eastern intros, latin rhythms, mischievous fencing between soloists and occasional big wall of unadulterated funk. Tight but cool. Very cool. And they dressed for it too.
Their best tracks, by far, were their own. I managed to pipe some of it through my mobile back to the office in the UK office to excited applause. Anglo-Afghan foot stomping achieved at the press of a button.
These guys are accomplished musicians. Some have degrees in music. Most are classically trained. They practice everyday, smoke hashish and, when they can afford it, drink beer.
Nearly all of the band were taken out of Afghanistan by their parents as children and educated in Iran, which is where they received their education. One guy ended up in Pakistan where he learned his craft as a mean fiddler.
They all struggle with the challenge of finding work amid massive levels of unemployment, and the fears of deteriorating security. But they also struggle with the familiar problems of negotiating recording studio time (and paying for it), finding venues to play, members not turning up for practice. Shining through all this is their sense of hope, and their genuine enjoyment of their art, as they plough a furrow of cool through Afghan culture.
They described the change in Kabul since the ousting of the Taleban as like being able to walk outside and enjoy breathing in cool, fresh air.
Their music bursts out of the shabby second story flat they’ve rented. Every day. One of the guys tells me that some of the pedestrians take a longer route home from work along their block so that they can listen to the music. I looked out of the balcony and sure enough, young boys are dancing (with their shoulders) on the street. Passers by slow down and smile as the music grabs them for a moment.
One of my Afghan colleagues, who could not stop smiling as he listened, said that he did not know how important music was. “It makes me feel free. Which means I had not realised I had been confined.”
There are those who would behead these guys for playing music like this. But there is a growing army of young people who have a thirst for it, and an older generation who remember the live bands they enjoyed back in the day. Kabulis are generally open minded and liberal, very hospitable; they are people who care, who want to live in peace, and enjoy that peace. Their music is an instrument for that enjoyment as well as of defiance in the face of those who would smash the peace they strive for.
These guys are not just musicians, they are revolutionaries.
