In August 2021, when the Taliban once again snatched power in Afghanistan, the entire Afghan youth orchestra managed to escape in Europe. For the last four years, young musicians of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (NIM) have found a new house in Portugal and are now guests at Young Euro Classic Festival in Berlin.
Anime founder and director Ahmed Sarmast said, “Playing instruments and playing music is completely forbidden in Afghanistan.”
Hey said that he was able to help 273 people associated with his music school to help people associated with Afghanistan. His Kabul school then closed and the equipment was destroyed.
“Listening and playing music is a human right. The people of Afghanistan are denied this right,” Sarmast told DW. “This gymnastics is in my country in a ‘silent nation’.”
Young Euro wants to preserve classic music traditions
But Afghan music lives in exile, including young euro classic. Hundreds of young musicians from all over the world at the annual youth orchestra festival invited European and non-European orchestra and enchances equally.
“The original symphonic music of the festival remains and how different countries deal with this tradition of classical music,” said the project manager, Caroline Trispel.
Still the younger, enclosure, performs music from their domestic countries and play traditional equipment from their cultures mainly in the “A festival within the festival” series.
“We are interested in preserving music traditions for the future and providing a platform for their further development,” Trispel said.
This year, apart from Afghan musicians, indigenous people from Bolivia, Indonesia, India, Gambia and Northern Scandinavia want to participate.
Prohibited music finds new voice
Some of these dresses play traditional music which were banned in their respective homes. It included singing of Sami people, known as “Joek”.
This spiritual mantra was prohibited from 18th to 20th century as it was lakes as an expression of a non-Christian religion.
“You often see it with indigenous people, that their own music language was suppressed by colonialism and music tradition, which is no longer allowed to practice,” Trispel explained.
Bolivian Enhanble, DOS Pars de La Orchesta Experimental Day Instrumentos Nativos has made new pieces uniquely for its traditional devices with chronic tunes from the ends.
Meanwhile, Azada Ezambal is an Afghan group within the young orchestra that performs traditional music and dance. Their performance highlights the relationship between humans and nature as well as the beauty of the country and its music.
Opposition to Taliban social policy
The Afghan Youth Orchestra was a guest in Bonn as part of the DW Campus Project at Beethowenfest with Iranian musicians at 2023.
Ahmed Sarmast, the founder of the orchestra, said, “When we came to Bon, there was no whole orchestra, only a part of it,” said Ahmed Sarmast, the founder of the orchestra.
In Berlin, 51 members of the entire orchestra are now performing in the young Euro classic, and they will put in the final concert.
“Every piece we play is somehow associated with the current situation in Afghanistan and the policies of the Taliban,” said Sarmast.
Songs performed by Afghan Youth Orchestra deal with topics like social harmony.
“A song is a call to Afghan men to support oppressed women in their struggle for freedom and equality,” Sarmasta explains.
A famous traditional piece is closely associated with celebrating the New Year in Afghanistan, but the Taliban has banned both festival and music and destroyed countless musical instruments.
“It has been celebrated in Afghanistan for thousands of years,” Sarmast explained. “Playing this piece is an protest against the destruction of the Taliban of the cultural tradition in Afghanistan.”
‘Hope Lives on’
The last of the concert songs, which was arranged by Tiago Morera da Silva, a young Portuguese conductor and director of the orchestra, is based on a famous Persian poem about the return of spring and the return of peace.
Ahmed Sarmast quoted Chile’s poet and freedom fighter Pablo Neruda: “You can cut flowers and trees, but spring will always come back, and you can’t stop freedom.”
The orchestra remains in touch with its homeland through social media, and by streaming its concerts.
“Lives on Hope,” Sarmast said, who believes that the day will come when the art can thrive again in Afghanistan.
“We want the Taliban to know that no opposing rule in human history has ever managed to remain in power. And it will be a case with the Taliban.”
This article was original in German.
