Afghanistan Remembers Music
April 24th, 2008I listened to a piece from WNYC’s Radio Lab recently only to form a more concrete relationship with the loss that victims suffer under Taliban rule.
From the outside, looking in, the culture seems muddied with the intermingling of past and present times. Between incomplete reports from the news agencies, history, and modern documentaries, it is difficult at best to discern the true sociology for a given place and time. My interpretation of the events that have transpired in the Middle East, especially those concerning the Taliban, were that I was getting a one-sided story and that the culture in general seemed very foreign - even hostile - to my Western upbringing. I didn’t have a real appreciation for the victims, primarily because I felt as though the victims were only really victims because the U.S. government told them they were. Because I didn’t have the contacts to speak to in the Middle East and I’ve never been to evaluate the situation for myself, I could only trust what I’m told for so far.
The Radio Lab podcast, Pop Music, went into a segment regarding one man’s experience in Afghanistan with his accordion. The piece is really quite good and I encourage you to listen to it for my post to have it’s full impact. At any rate, this novice accordion player discovers that some forms of music cross the boundaries - or preconceived boundaries - of our world’s cultures. There are ideas that translate to sounds in music that are echoed through every civilization and tell the same story. Afghanistan had just crawled out of very long period of silence during its war with Russia, then Taliban rule. Music is one of those mediums that can insight such raw emotions in people and the Afghans were no exception. After the cultural bans experienced through the previous years, this accordion player steps timidly onto a bar stage where prompted by his new audience and supported by his translator, performs Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire to “the best audience [ever].” It wasn’t particularly well done, but the crowd goes wild. At a certain point during the program, I was awashed with a feeling of joy, triumph, grief, and camaraderie. There’s probably a more succinct way of stating that, but it isn’t anything that’s happened to me often enough to find the proper word for.
It was this last bit that really stuck with me. I finally understood what it must have been like to live in such a stifled society as to be allowed no cultural displays; no music, no dancing, no art. It’s an incredible feeling of sadness and hopelessness that I feel when I try to imagine it.
The Taliban were not the first to run a people in this way, and it’s doubtful they’ll be the last. I just hope that I’m always in a place where I am free to explore my culture, or anybody else’s for that matter. I really hope that people being oppressed in the world today find liberation and the strength to reunite with their forgotten past.
Further Reading: Afghanistan, Ahmad Zahir, Taliban
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