|
|
The country’s rich musical
culture was nearly destroyed |
IN THE WAKE of the turmoil in Afghanistan, a project which aims to help rebuild the cultural heritage of Afghan peoples has been launched at the University of London’s Goldsmiths College.
The conception of the Afghanistan Music Unit has been overseen by ethnologist John Baily, who has studied the music of Afghanistan for almost thirty years. His last report on the subject, entitled ‘Can You Stop the Birds Singing?’, was published last year, when the Taliban were still in power. Many of the recommendations in the report were suggested “in the hope that in due course conditions will change and a less authoritarian regime will come into being”. The new unit at Goldsmiths intends to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the new situation in Afghanistan, where there is now hope that cultural expression might flourish once more.
Along with the repression of women’s rights, musical censorship has been one of the most highlighted issues in media coverage of Afghanistan over the past six months. Problems with censorship extend back some twenty years, from the time that the Communists were installed in Kabul and the USSR invaded. Under the Taliban regime which later came to power, repression of the rights of people to enjoy most forms of music became especially severe, and a total ban on musical instruments was imposed in 1996.
Representatives from the Office for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice were given powers to confiscate instruments and publicly burn them, along with audiotape recorders, VCRs and televisions. The only music condoned by the authorities consisted of certain religious poetry and “chants” which celebrated the achievements of Talib warriors and Taliban principles. The chants drew heavily on traditional Pashtun song structures, but were strictly to be performed without instrumental accompaniment. Concern grew that entire generations might grow up without having heard or learnt to play any music, and that many cultural traditions might be irrevocably lost.
The Afghanistan Music Unit (AMU) aims both to provide a resource for the rediscovery of musical heritage and to monitor the freedom of musical expression as it develops in the new Afghanistan. Baily has acquired over 200 hours of recordings that were made in Herat, western Afghanistan, in the 1970s, and plans to produce a series of CDs which can be used to repatriate music to the region. The idiosyncratic musical instruments of the region are also in danger of disappearing, and so part of the AMU’s aim will be to support Afghan craftsmen as they make new ones. However, the objective is not only to reintroduce traditional, regional styles of music, but also to build on a popular, contemporary music movement.
Baily argues that “the creation and broadcasting of a style of popular music that brought together elements of the two principal music systems, Pashtun and Tajik, played an important role in creating and expressing an Afghan national identity in the 20th century.” Before strict censorship was imposed, agencies such as Radio Afghanistan and Kabul TV supported this cross-fertilisation of music. As Baily points out, it is not only within Afghanistan that Afghan peoples have been denied music, but also in the refugee camps in Iran and Pakistan. It was here, during the period of desolation which followed the 1978 Communist coup, that the Taliban themselves first began to coalesce, and promulgate their ultra-orthodox beliefs, including the prohibition of music. The effects of this prohibition still exist today.
Whilst Afghan refugees have carried their musical culture into exile, many of the regional styles of music have always crossed national boundaries. Part of AMU’s work will include educating those who administer aid to Afghan refugees outside the country, and documenting music from both sides of Afghanistan’s borders. Baily firmly believes that catalysing this process of cultural transference is essential if a strong sense of nationality is to be achieved. In addition, if AMU is able to monitor the freedom of musical expression, then this may act as a barometer for the state of other human rights issues within Afghanistan.
The creation of the unit at Goldsmiths forms part of a growing movement which focuses on music censorship around the world. In 1998 the first World Conference on Music and Censorship took place in Copenhagen, bringing together musicians, academics, researchers, record industry professionals and human rights activists. A campaigning organisation, Freemuse, was born out of this meeting, and attracted funding from the Danish government to develop strategies to document and expose instances of censorship. Freemuse, taking its brief from the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, is now working to highlight the difficulties faced by musicians across the globe, from China and Sudan to Algeria and the USA,. The second world conference takes place in Copenhagen in September 2002. |
|
|
|
“Can you stop the birds singing?” by John Baily, and information on the World Conference on Music and Censorship, can be found at:
|
| http://www.freemuse.org |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
