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!

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Greetings from Faizabad Bazar: More Nashenas

Shopkeeper, Faizabad

The music of Nashenas and Amir Jan Herawi, as expected, has struck a chord with readers and followers  (that mighty tribe) of the Washerman’s Dog. But not without complaint! A number of fellow travellers have pointed out that a couple of the tracks (6 and 7 in particular) either end  or begin prematurely.  While this is very irritating (to me no less than anyone else) I am unfortunately unable to provide a fix.  The problem lies in the fact that we are dealing with 20 year old tapes that have been through the ringer (or at least neglected like orphan children) and bear the scars of such ill treatment.  I do apologize but trust that the 6 tracks that are untainted provide sufficient pleasure for many hours. I have listened to little else since rediscovering these tapes.

But to demonstrate that the Washerman’s Dog is not all bark and no bite, and to make the pain a little less acute, I post another collection of the Unknown One’s music.  I picked this tape up, rather unexpectedly, in the main bazar of Faizabad, the main city in Afghanistan that in those days before 911 still had not fallen to the Taliban, and where schools still admitted girls and more importantly parents eagerly enrolled their daughters in school.

It was a real frontier town. As you approached the airport, nestled in the high Pamir mountains like a frightened lamb deep in the folds of a shepherd’s cloak, the wings of your twin prop seemed in danger of skimming the cliff faces on either side of  a deep gorge, flying through which was the closest thing to being in a video game I’ve experienced. Suddenly you turn what seems another blind corner and the narrow rock walls give way to a narrow strip of worn and rusted iron, like a giant shower mat, on to which your plane clunks down and rumbles to a halt some several hundred meters further down the field. 

Faizabad

Girls and boys in school in Faizabad

Faizabad bazaar was dominated by a rutted track thick with mud, mule manure, orange peels, medicine men, caravan walas, NGO workers, government officials of some sort and gunmen in town doing deals on turning the pink fields of poppy into bundles of gold.  Its music scene was not great and when I nudged through a few shops I found mostly cheap reproductions of the latest Indian film music.  So I was pleasantly surprised when I enquired about Nashenas that someone went running and came back a few minutes later with a homemade recording of the great man. It was given to me free of charge!

This is another very rare collection of ghazals sung in Persian and Urdu (though one of the best Urdu ones ends abruptly as the tape clicks off).  Apart from that travesty, this is a strong collection and I hope it makes up for the few screwed up tracks on the earlier posting.  But part of the charm of these sorts of tapes is their ‘home made’ feel and one comes to expect these sudden shifts in scene. On this particular tape the challenge increased with a wrongly numbered set list and a graphic form of calligraphy that made it almost impossible for me in some instances to make out the spelling. So I plead with all those familiar with Dari and Pashto, please forgive my hopeless attempts at transliteration and deciphering.

         Track Listing: (with corrections by A.)

1.    Yaarab aan aahuuye mushkeen
2.    Zamaala Shaaqi Sara

3.    Kaun Aaya Mere Man

4.    Biyaa shabhaaye mahtaab ast

5.    Jab Dil Hi Toot Gaya (pt 1)

6.    Dad-e-Koomi pyala

7.    Raftand ahl-e suhabat

8.    Da Husn Shor ma shor

9.    Aatish-e-dar-e-jan-e-man

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The Wonder that Was Afghanistan: Nashenas

This is a very special post. Indeed, it is probably the most significant post since the Washerman’s Dog began.  On offer tonight is a very rare (nay, extremely rare) collection of music from Afghanistan.  These recordings were made in 1990 as a ‘labour of love’ by one of my colleagues in the UN when we both were posted in Pakistan.

The late 1980s were a period of intense activity in Afghanistan. The Soviets had admitted defeat (unlike the Americans today) and were in the process of pulling their forces back to Mother Russia. The bearded fanatics from whom, a few years hence would spring the Taliban, were punch drunk from their victory and cashed up with Saudi and American dollars. For secular, progressive and moderate Afghans, whether in Kabul or the sprawling refugee camps floating like human oceans around Peshawar and Quetta in Pakistan, life took a decided turn for the worse. Many were assassinated and plenty more were threatened with the same fate. Educated Afghan professionals who had managed to survive the Soviet occupation fled to Pakistan in great numbers.  Although a peace accord had been signed in Geneva, on the ground, chaos was the reality.

Dr Md Sadiq Fitrat 'Nashenas'

Among the professionals who fled to Pakistan in the late 80s was Dr Mohammad Sadiq Fitrat, popularly known as Nashenas (The Unknown One). Although I was not, in those days, a fan of Afghan music, I was aware of the whispered ripples of news that made it to our office in Islamabad. Nashenas was here! His name and his unknown whereabouts deepened the mystery and made me want to hear his music.

A few months later I got the opportunity, via a double cassette produced by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Pakistan’s venerable Lok Virsa (Folk Heritage) Institute.  A senior colleague, the Frenchman, Phillipe Labreveux, was the project’s sponsor. He knew of Nashenas’s music and as soon as he arrived in Pakistan made it his mission to record him and honour him as an artist and as a refugee. This tape has sat in a box in my garage for years and I am willing to bet my hind leg that there are very few copies of this amazing concert available anywhere in the world, in any format.

Nashenas enjoys the reputation of being one of the most popular Afghan singers, and is representative of a generation of amateurs from well-educated middle-class background who became professional or at least well known in the public domain. The fact that they turned to music, despite all kinds of social pressures, says a good deal about the progressive state of Kabul in the middle of the 20^th century. Such a commitment to performance by amateurs is inconceivable in the Pashtun society of northern Pakistan, where musicians and singers are exclusively recruited from low ranking hereditary musician castes.

Dr Mohammad Sadiq Fitrat was born in 1935 in that most Pashtun of cities, Kandahar, a member of the Pashtun tribe called Kakar. From 1940-1947 he resided with his family in various cities in present day India and Pakistan, where he father was a representative of the Afghan National Bank. It was here that he learned Urdu; while this long exposure to the culture of what was then still British India undoubtedly had important musical influences.  He graduated from the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Kabul University in 1959 and was then employed by Radio Afghanistan as Director of Foreign Programs. In 1962 he was sent to Moscow University to continue his studies and was later awardee a doctorate in Pashto literature.

His singing career started in the 1950s.  Dr Fitrat was a self-taught musician who used to practice at home late at night, sitting under a blanket with his harmonium to deaden the sound, so that his father sleeping below should not know what he was up to. When he started singing for Radio Afghanistan he did so under the name of Nashenas (the Unknown One), in order to hide his identity. It was several years before he felt able to reveal to his father that he was by now the famous radio singer. Despite having recorded some 400 songs for Radio Afghanistan and various record and cassette companies, Nashenas is proud of the fact that he never made his living from singing. Music remained for him a true shauq, a hobby pursued with passionate fervour. As a singer he made various visits to India, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran to perform Afghan music on behalf of the Ministry of Information and Culture, but his career was mostly spent working for the Ministry, in it History Dept., and for Radio Afghanistan. He remained in Kabul and was demoted to a humble position within the Ministry because of his refusal to join the ruling PDPA party. Nor would he sing songs in support of the Communist pro-Soviet regime. From 1985-89 he was sent to the embassy in Moscow to keep him out of mischief. He returned to Kabul in 1989 and escape with his wife and children to Pakistan a few months later.

Nashenas has greater vocal range and more interest in timbrel and dynamic variety than many Afghan singers. He performs in a number of vocal genres including Pashto folk and Afghan popular songs. He is also noted for his rendition of Hindi geet and has often been compared to the great Indian singer Saighal. He is also knowledgeable about Afghan classical music. What really distinguishes him as a performer is his great knowledge of Persian and Pashto classical poetry. Many prominent ghazal singers in Kabul who are from hereditary musician families are non-literate and treat this poetry was though it were an oral tradition. Fro the point of view of the Afghan literati their son texts were often incorrect, with all sorts of errors and other transformations creeping in. Problems of this kind do not arise with the singing of Nashenas.

These recordings were made under the auspices of UNHCR and Lok Virsa, in Islamabad. It was agreed in advance that Nashenas would record a set of ghazals in the style of Kabul, and several musicians were engaged as accompanists: Amir Jan Herawi (rubab), Seid Gol (sarinda), Arif Mahmud Chisthi (tabla) were all Afghan refugees.  Ustad Bahktiar (rubab), Allah Rakha Khan (sarangi) and Irshad Ali (tampura) were Pakistani musicians.  Nashenas put in a great deal of preparation into the choice of poetry, both the ghazals and the interpolated couplets he would add to them (like picking a bouquet of roses, with a flower from here and flower from there as the Afghan ghazal singers are wont to say) and made copious hand-written notes for his song texts. For some of the ghazals accompaniment is provided only by sarangi, tabla and tampura, while in others rubab and sarinda are included. (Liner Notes)

Track Listing

01 Ey saba, an che shenidi

02 Man-e-sang-dil che asar

03 Dil-egarm-e-man

04 Da saba bada gozar

05 Mey-paraste-ijad-am

06 Haselam zin mazra-e-bi-bar

07 Khat par mukh da sanam

08 Man jan-e-kharabat-am

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