The world only knows of Malala but a musical revolution is on in Afghanistan
When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. She was only 15 when a bullet was put through her head in her school bus on her way back home. Malala survived not only to tell her tale but transform herself into an icon of girl power. Her journey from Pakistan’s remote Swat Valley to the hallowed halls of the United Nations in New York has been extraordinary, culminating in the Nobel Peace Prize at just 16, the youngest recipient ever; going on to become a global symbol of peaceful protest.
Malala is not the only one fighting a battle against the Taliban’s cultural choke. Afghanistan was once a liberal society where more women were in the workforce than men. All that changed once the Taliban took control rapidly changing the contours of Afghan society – music was banned and women shackled.
Prior to the rise of the Taliban, women in Afghanistan were protected under law and increasingly afforded rights in Afghan society. Women received the right to vote in the 1920s; and in the 1960s, the Afghan constitution provided for equality for women. In 1977, women comprised over 15 per cent of Afghanistan’s highest legislative body. It is estimated that by the early 1990s, 70 per cent of schoolteachers, 50 per cent of government workers and university students, and 40 per cent of doctors in Kabul were women.
But those days are gone. Fifteen years after the end of Taliban regime, gender parity remains a distant dream in Afghanistan despite claims of progress.
According to a National Bureau of Statistics survey conducted in 2016, just 19 per cent of all Afghan women had attended school. Of women and girls under the age of 25, only 36 percent of those surveyed said they had been to school.
But then you can’t keep them down for long as they say. A group of young Afghan girls is doing just that, challenging the oppressive Afghan patriarchy simply by playing music. Welcome to the world of Zohra, an ensemble of 35 women who play both western and Afghan musical instruments.
Music has offered the Zohra’s girls the chance of another life. Those now adept at playing the violin, piano and traditional instruments of Afghanistan, were once street working children
At 18, violinist Zarifa Adiba has already performed at the Carnegie Hall in New York. At the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, she conducted four pieces as the second conductor of the orchestra, where the young Shia Hazara girl with high cheekbones knew how to obtain focus and silence among the excited young troops.
But it is the story of the main conductor which is awe inspiring.
Like many teenagers, 19-year-old Negin Khpalwak from Kunar in eastern Afghanistan loves music, but few people of her age have battled as fiercely to pursue their passion in the face of family hostility and threats.
Negin took her first steps learning music in secret, before eventually revealing her activity to her father. He encouraged her, but the reaction from the rest of her conservative Pashtun family was hostile.
Except for the father, everybody in the family was against it. How can a Pashtun girl play music when even the men in the tribe don’t have the right to do it was the outrage among her relatives.
She now lives in an orphanage in the Afghan capital of Kabul and leads the Zohra orchestra, an ensemble of 35 women at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music
Zohra’s ensemble of 35 young musicians is largely aged 13 to 20; some orphans, some from poor families. The orchestra is led by Negin who celebrated her 20th birthday on the return flight from Europe after performing at Davos in January. The girls have overcome death threats and discrimination in this deeply conservative war-torn country to play together.
With their hair hastily knotted, eyes focused on their instruments, the musicians perform in unison under Negin’s baton.
She is proud to be Afghanistan’s first female conductor. Dr Ahmad Sarmast, the musicologist who founded Afghanistan’s National Institute of Music (Anim) and the Zohra orchestra, understands the risks facing women in Afghanistan who pursue music — banned during the Taliban’s repressive 1996 -2001 rule and still frowned upon in the tightly gender-segregated conservative society.
Zohra is very symbolic for Afghanistan. It’s hard for these Afghan girls. Some fathers do not even let their daughters go to school, forget about music school. For most Afghan men, women are to stay at home and clean up.
But Negin’s strong parents stood against her entire family to allow her to attend music lessons. In fact, it was her grandmother who threatened her dad that if he let Negina go to music school, he wouldn’t be her son anymore.
Since then, her family has left their native Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan, and moved to Kabul.
Life is hard in the capital city, jobs are scarce, but Negina feels it is better than being dead. And she is not going to forget her uncle’s words easily: “Wherever I see you, I’ll kill you. You are a shame for us.”
Negina wants to go to a prestigious US university on a scholarship and then to become the conductor of the Afghanistan National Orchestra.
When she went home on a recent visit, her uncles and brothers threatened to beat her for a performing appearance on television, and she had to return to Kabul the next day. But Negin remains fiercely determined to continue on a path that has given her a new sense of identity.
With their hair hastily knotted, eyes focused on their instruments, the girl musicians perform under the watchful eye of Negin, transporting them to a brave new world of music and hope. And a new tomorrow.