Cross Link: Music of the Taliban

Strange but true, but read all about it here on my other site.

Will Kabul Listen to This in 2014? Fardin Faryad

I’ve been attending a roundtable on the role of women in Afghanistan post 2014. A very articulate delegation of Afghan parliamentarians and women activists are the focus of the discussions which are fascinating. Several local expatriate Afghans are also in attendance.

Here a few things I learned on Day one.

·      *Many Afghan expatriates who have been out of the country for many years are dead scared to return. They fear for their life and property. Yet they long to return to the land of their fathers and mothers. So frustration is high.

·      *Everyone is putting on a brave face about what life will be like after the Americans/NATO pull out in 2014.  But they are scared. They could not bear to imagine having to go back to a Taliban-controlled life and society.

·      *But they feel the 12 years of the occupation has been especially important for them and ‘we are not the same Afghans as in 2001. Women know how to resist now. We know how to organise now. We know we will never go back to those days.”

·      *The women of Afghanistan are brave.  They are targeted for assassination continuously as soon as they reach a position of public influence, be it leader of a womens’ NGO or a political party. As one said, “The US has made women in public life the most obvious success factor of the occupation. The Taliban know this and so they target individual women as a reminder to others of the price they will have to pay to succeed.”

·      *The Americans and NATO forces are only concerned about handing over power to Afghans. Don’t care if they are the right Afghans or not, just hand over and walk away.  As a result lots of unvetted, unqualified, untrained men are getting guns from the Americans to act as local police. Instead they are acting as local petty warlairds and acting with violence and impunity. Especially against women.

Fardin Faryad

I’ve included a recent album by a young Hazara Afghan expatriate who lives and works out of Montreal, Fardin Faryad. A bit of nice romantic Afghan pop music. Fardin has a nice voice and his arrangements are generally quite good too.  This is what the youth of Afghanistan hope they can still listen to after 2014.

            Track Listing:

01 Ne Namesha

02 Naro Naro

03 Dile Dile

04 Darya

05 Sobhoom

06 Pashto

07 Maadar

08 Tuh Rafti

09 Dil

10 Jan-o-Jahan

11 Ne Namesha (Reprise)

here

The Source: Amir Khusrau (Fresh Link)

Ameer Khusrau

Hazrat Ameer Khusau was a phenomenon that just came off seven centuries ago. His was indeed a multi-splendored life of 72 years. A versatile scholar par excellence, Khusrau was  also a singer, poet, author who left an everlasting impact of his personality on whatever he touched.

His deep insight into Persian and Indian music inspired him to evolve and enrich Turko-Hindustani music: it acquired new facets. It assumed new dimensions.

His name is traditionally associated with the innovations qawwali, qual, qalbana, tarana and khayal, in ragas like Sazgiri and Farghana or their variations, in instrumental music, the sitar and the tabla, while in ghazals, he was the pioneer of Dogana (fusion of Persian and Hindustani lines into one). He wrote songs of sawan and of the parting daughter. He invented Do Sukhne, versified puzzles and Kah Mukarni. And because of all this Mir Khusro is still a name to conjure with in far flung villages of north India.

Born of a Turk father, a chieftain, and an Indian mother, Abul Hassan Yaminuddin Khusrau was brought up in maternal lineage. Khusrau called himself Turk-e-Hindustani and was proud of being an Indian. His love of the motherland filled him with a sense of fulfilment and pride which is so evident in his writings.

Author of five romantic masnavis (long narratives) in succession, he wrote them voluminously-18 thousand couplets on the pattern and theme of Nizami. He added five historical masnavis to the treasure of source material of medieval India.

Selections from his five Persian divans, compiled by himself, have appeared in five countries, namely Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, USSR and India.

Khusrau was a courtier and he held high positions in the courts of five emperors. He moved with the royal entourage and yet, was averse to blood-shed and flattery. He was a spiritual disciple of Hazrat Nizamuddim Aulia Chisti (1234-1325). The Chistia School of Sufism made Khusrau truly catholic and humane in his outlook. Therefore, in his normal life, he was very close to the masses and shared their hopes and aspirations, travails and tribulations.

The greatest Persian lyricist, Hafiz of Shiraz transcribed thousands of his lines and described him as Tooti-e-Hind (Songbird of India). European orientalists rated him among the world’s eminent poets. Iranians recognised him as an integral part of the history of their literature. He infused into Persian ghazals the amorous touch of Indo-Iranian music. Afghanistan owned him as Khusrav-e-Bulkhi, known as Dehlavi. His ghazals are sung in Soviet Asia and form a par of the curricula there.

While Khusrau could bravely stand the loss of his mother and youthful brother (1299) and continue to compose poetry, he could not bear the loss of his spiritual mentor, the 92 year old Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia. He burst out with only one doha and later the same year, followed in the footsteps of his Master to the heavenly abode:-

            Gori Sove Sej pe Mukh par Dare Kes

            Chal Khusrau Ghar Apne Sanjh Bhayee Chahun Des

Dr. Zoe Ansari (1975) 

From the liner notes of this wonderful LP. Full of everything from qawwali to khayal by some of the greatest of India’s musicians. 

            Track Listing:

01 Dohe (Nizamuddin Peer Auliya /Chakwa Chakwi do Jaane) [Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan]

02 Bandish (Jo Piya awan kah gaye) and Sawan Geet (Amman mere baba ko bhejo ji) [Sudha Malhotra, Krishna Kalle, Dilraj Kaur and Pushpa Paghdare]

03 Ze haal-e-miskin makun taghaful durae naina banae batiyan [Mukesh and Sudha Malhotra]

04 Yaar-e-man beaa beaa (Ektaal) [Kankana Banerjee]

05 Mukarniyan [Vani Jairam and Krishna Kalle]

06 Raga Zilaf [Pandit Jasraj]

07 Raga Emen Kalyan [Pandit Pratap Narayan and Kankana Bannerjee]

08 Man kunt-o-maulaho fa aliyun maulah [Shankar Shambu Qawwal]

09 Aaj Ranj hai [Shankar Shambu Qawwal]

10 Dohe (Khusrau rain suhag ki Gori sowe sej pe) [Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan]

HERE

Live in Concert: Nashenas

A good news story tonight from a place that could use it.

Afghanistan National Institute Of Music Hopes To Bring Comfort In Time Of War

A cacophony ranging from Asian string instruments to the delicate cadences of classical piano pours out of a two-storey building in central Kabul.

Here, at Afghanistan's sole music academy, students are taught music with the hope it will bring comfort in the face of war and poverty, bringing back cellos and violins to revive a rich musical legacy disrupted by decades of violence and suppression.

"We are committed to build ruined lives through music, given its healing power," Ahmad Sarmast, head of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, told Reuters.

The trumpet player turned musicologist set up the school two years ago on the site of the School of Fine Arts' music department, which was forced to shut in the early 1990s as civil war engulfed the country following a decade-long Soviet occupation.

The austere Taliban, who took over in 1996, then banned music outright, something unthinkable in today's Afghanistan, where cafes and cars blast Indian love songs and the tunes of 1970s Afghan crooner Ahmad Zahir.

But while the institute's 140 full-time pupils have little recollection of that time, they still face hardships in their musical pursuits.

Half the students are orphans or street children, with the rest selected after a music exam.

All are passionate about music, said voice and flute teacher Mashal Arman, daughter of famed Afghan musician Hossein, whose black-and-white photographs grace the school's hall.

"They are so thirsty for music and art, it is fabulous to see the country finally changing," said Arman, whose accent hints at her connection to Switzerland, where she fled with her family more than 20 years ago.

Sarmast said he had also set a quota that a third of students must be girls -- a gesture towards the plight of Afghan women, who still struggle for basic rights such as education after 30 years of war and harsh Taliban rule.

All students receive full scholarships to attend the school, which operates under the Ministry of Education with significant foreign funding, notably from Britain, Germany and Denmark. They are awarded internationally recognised music diplomas.

"The return of music is one of the most positive changes in post-Taliban Afghanistan," said Sarmast, who studied in Moscow and Australia before returning to Afghanistan in 2008 with a mission to establish the academy.

NO INSTRUMENTS

In one of the school's carpeted rehearsal rooms, recently soundproofed with Afghan timber, 14-year-old orphan Fatima strums a sitar, conjuring up sounds familiar to Afghan children, who adore Bollywood films and their music.

"I was encouraged to come here and I am happy for it. I love playing," Fatima said, adjusting the pink cap covering her hair that she uses instead of a headscarf.

Her Indian teacher, Irfan Khan, one of 16 foreign instructors at the school, watches approvingly but laments the poverty that prevents students from owning instruments, hindering their progress.

"We are reviving music for those who have been deprived," he said. "However, many of the students do not come from affluent families and are only able to practise here".

At $600, a new saxophone is more than $100 higher than an average worker's annual salary, according to Finance Ministry estimates.

For star classical piano pupil Sayed Elham, a jovial 13-year-old with a passion for Chopin, the $3,000 needed to trade his family's Casio keyboard for a full-size piano is nothing but a dream.

"I want our government to improve the state of Afghan music," he said after performing Chopin's Nocturne for some fellow students, who gathered to hear him rehearse.

Despite the school's success -- it takes on an extra 80 or so students for its two-month winter academy and is building a 300-seat auditorium and separate building for rehearsing -- the future for musicians in Afghanistan is bleak.

Rights taken for granted by musicians in the West, such as copyright and royalties, do not exist, and most recording and broadcasting fees must be paid out of the musician's pocket.

In addition, there are scant prospects of jobs.

"We have a long way to go to make sure that our graduates are getting just remuneration and their rights protected," Sarmast said.

But he now hopes his graduates will form Afghanistan's first national symphony orchestra, a vision already in the works. (Reuters)

To celebrate we include a live concert of the greatest living Afghan singer, Nashenas. Recorded on cassette live in Paris and Hamburg in the 1990s. His warm voice is always welcome.

No track listing as I’m no expert in Farsi or Pashto but if anyone wants to provide one, I’m happy!

here

Those Were the Days: Dave Brubeck Quartet

Dave Brubeck in Kabul (1958)

Sticking to the theme of better days of Afghanistan and its musical history, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that in the late 1950s and early 60s, Kabul was a regular stop for American musicians on their global tours. 

Duke Ellington touches down in Kabul

The Meridian International Center (about whose existence I was informed by an old dost, Hannah) has a wonderful site dedicated to documenting the history (albeit cultural and positive aspects, not so much the recent more ambivalent aspects) of American-Afghan relations. The Center’s basic premise that “cultural exchanges and exhibitions serve as catalysts for greater mutual understanding” is one I have no problem with and indeed endorse wholeheartedly. As another follower of the Dog said recently, "I've decided that MUSIC is just about the only thing that can be a force for Good in the world 'cause it's just about the only thing that can touch and move the human heart."

Indeed.

Kuchi lady

Today’s post features the West-coast jazz of the hugely popular (and not uncontroversial) Dave Brubeck.  His band visited Afghanistan in 1958 and soon thereafter released an album called Jazz Impressions of Eurasia. One of the tracks, Nomad was inspired by the Afghan kuchi nomads that tend the large herds of camels all across the southern and eastern parts of the country.

Transcript of "Nomad"

The album cover itself is a lot of fun. And historical. Not only is Pan Am such a cipher for a certain, more certain age of American involvement in the world but the goofy turban that Dave sports on his head is, I suppose, some art director’s attempt to bottle the essence of ‘East’.

Now all we can hope for is that one day soon such exchanges begin again. How about Bob Dylan in Badakhshan! Or JJ Cale visits Jalalabad. Or Mose Allison rocks Mazar-e-Sharif?!

I’ll be first in line. Let me know how many tickets you want!

            Track Listing:

01.  Nomad

02.  Brandenburg Gate

03.  The Golden Horn

04.  Thank you (Dziekuje)

05.  Marble Arch

06.  Calcutta Blues

Listen here