The Afghan Youth Orchestra with its founder, Ahmad Sarmast.
Courtesy of the Afghanistan Nationwide Institute of Music
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Courtesy of the Afghanistan Nationwide Institute of Music
Three years in the past, practically 300 younger Afghan musicians, their lecturers, and employees from their music college fled Afghanistan in worry for his or her lives after their nation fell once more to the Taliban. NPR adopted them on their journey from Kabul to a brand new life.
Since then, they’ve been completely rebuilding their group as refugees in northern Portugal. NPR visited them as they started to place down roots and just lately caught up with them once more, simply earlier than they tour the U.S. because the Afghan Youth Orchestra.
The Afghanistan Nationwide Institute of Music represented an thrilling imaginative and prescient of Afghanistan. It introduced collectively youngsters from everywhere in the nation, girls and boys alike, from vastly totally different socioeconomic circumstances, ethnicities, and language teams, says Ahmad Sarmast, the varsity’s director. He based the varsity in 2010.
“I believe one factor that connects us is not only our nationality or language or faith, however taking part in music,” Sarmast observes. “Making music collectively additionally performs a major position in retaining our id as a group.”
That shared love of music is what binds them collectively.
“The group could be very various, like Afghanistan itself,” he says. “The group of the Afghanistan Nationwide Institute of Music is a mosaic, a smaller mosaic of the gorgeous, various Afghanistan.”
The college shortly gained worldwide prominence; its musicians even toured the U.S. in 2013, together with a efficiency at New York Metropolis’s Carnegie Corridor. It appeared like a brand new period was dawning.
However even earlier than the Taliban seized energy once more in 2021, everybody on the college knew that they have been nonetheless at critical danger. The hazard turned very actual: A suicide bomber attacked considered one of their concert events and severely injured Sarmast, who was sitting only a few seats from the attacker.
“Our college was within the excessive hit listing of the Taliban. They attacked considered one of our performances in 2014, the place two folks have been killed, and I used to be injured,” he says.
Sarmast was practically killed in that assault – with 11 items of shrapnel lodged in his cranium – and his listening to was severely broken. Over the subsequent few years, there have been a number of extra deliberate assaults on the varsity and Sarmast himself, all of which have been foiled.
As soon as the Taliban reseized management of Afghanistan in 2021, nevertheless, he felt there was no different alternative. As soon as once more, education for women previous the sixth grade has been banned. So has taking part in and listening to music — and the Taliban have seized and burned devices.
“We knew when the Taliban was going to come back [back],” Sarmast says, “our college would be the first goal, and it will likely be the start of one other cultural genocide.”
So within the fall of 2021, with the help of the governments of Qatar and Portugal, college students, school, employees, and a few members of the family – have been airlifted out of Kabul and resettled collectively as a group. They have been going to recreate the musical coronary heart of Afghanistan — in northern Portugal, close to Braga.
I visited them in Portugal within the fall of 2022, not lengthy after that they had been moved from non permanent quarters in Lisbon to Braga, a quieter space not removed from the border with Spain.
They have been nonetheless settling in, enrolling in native colleges and getting used to the meals. I ate lunch with among the teenage college students at an area Catholic charitable group, the place most of them politely pushed plainly cooked fish and overboiled Brussels sprouts round their plates. It was a world away from the spiced meats and pilafs of their homeland.
15-year-old trumpet participant Zohra Ahmadi, a member of the Afghan Youth Orchestra.
Emilie Charransol
/Courtesy of the Afghanistan Nationwide Institute of Music
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Emilie Charransol
/Courtesy of the Afghanistan Nationwide Institute of Music
However the style of house got here once they pulled out their devices — such because the sitar, santoor, rubab and harmonium — and started rehearsing conventional Afghan music.
They love taking part in and are fulfilling their lifetime desires of being musicians. But additionally, they perceive their tasks, says 15-year-old Zohra Ahmadi, who performs trumpet.
“We’re the voice of a rustic that has no music,” she says. “It’s a bit unhappy to consider it, that we’re the one ones taking part in.”
Sarmast, the varsity’s director, says the varsity’s mission has expanded and turn into much more pressing. He says his college students have to be those to protect their nation’s music from greater than 4,000 miles away. He says it is not only a mission: It is a obligation to the nation they needed to flee.
“Now, we’re answerable for safeguarding Afghan music,” Sarmast says firmly. “Advocating for the music rights and cultural rights of the Afghan folks, and for freedom of expression, by way of music in all its types and freedom. And likewise actively advocating for stopping gender apartheid in Afghanistan.”
Whereas they’re studying a lot materials that celebrates wealthy, historical and deep musical traditions from throughout Afghanistan, they’re additionally solidly turning into a part of a brand new nation.
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17-year-old Elham Asefi performs guitar. He says the Portuguese locals have been very welcoming and pleasant, and are affected person in serving to them grasp yet one more language. “The Portugal individuals are very variety,” he says fondly. “Like, they assist us.”
And in the end, most of the college students are wanting ahead to being reunited with members of the family in Portugal – hopefully very quickly, Sarmast says.
“We’re all ready for the arrival of the households from Afghanistan to Portugal,” he notes. “We have now the approval of the federal government of Portugal – 368 folks to reunite with their households.”
Within the meantime, these younger Afghan musicians are lastly again to touring internationally, bringing their music and message to new audiences. Current appearances have included performances throughout the U.Ok. and on the 2023 United Nations Human Rights Convention in Switzerland.
They may carry out at Carnegie Corridor in New York Metropolis on Wednesday night and on the Kennedy Middle in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.
Each trumpeter Zohra Ahmadi and guitarist Elham Asefi are thrilled to be visiting the U.S. — notably to carry out at Carnegie.
“Actually excited!” Ahmadi exclaims, guffawing.
“We’re actually excited,” Asefi chimes in. “It is a huge stage, the stage we play at Carnegie Corridor. Each musician has a dream to play there.”
They are saying that it doesn’t matter what, they may proceed to be a voice for Afghanistan internationally – a voice that refuses to be silenced.
