The Wall Street Journal recently published an article entitled An Upbeat Afghan Story by Lara Pellegrinelli, a NPR (National Public Radio) Freelance Contributor and Harvard University PhD graduate in Ethnomusicology.
Pellegrinelli focuses on the newly established Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) headed by Ahmad Sarmast and the impact of music in Afghan society.
The piece is a feel good story that sheds light on the music of Afghanistan that continues to thrive, despite being oppressed by Islamists.
Pellegrinelli quotes Ahmad Sarmast and two top Western experts on Afghan music, Lorraine Sakata, professor emeritus of ethnomusicology at UCLA and John Baily, professor emeritus of ethnomusicology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Yet the her story misses and misrepresents a number of key facts.
Here are four that prominently standout:
1. Ahmad Sarmast’s late father, Salim Sarmast, was a renowned composer, orchestra conductor and teacher at the Musical High School of Kabul, which had a long history in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan National Institute of Music isn’t the first music school in Afghanistan. Ahmad Sarmast is courageously taking musical education to a higher level.
2. True, the Afghan refugee camps inside Pakistan were run by mullahs. But the story fails to mention that these camps were also under the watchful eyes of the CIA/ISI backed Islamists, mujaheddin or “Freedom Fighters” as labeled by Ronald Reagan, who funded and used them to give the USSR their Vietnam in Afghanistan. These fundamentalists were the first to ban music. The Taliban simply followed their practice and razed to the ground what was left, including the failed attempt to destroy the entire musical archives of Radio TV Afghanistan and Afghan Films.
3. Labeling Ahmad Zahir as the “Afghan Elvis” misrepresents his music, message and talent. In the Western comparative, he was a combination of John Lennon, Johnny Cash and Dean Martin. Zahir was a politically motivated artist. The majority of his songs were autobiographical. Sadly, Pellegrinelli isn’t the first to label Zahir the “Afghan Elvis”.
4. Finally, Pellegrinelli writes “today’s Kabul looks like a city from the Stone Age”. I’m not sure if Pellegrinelli has recently visited Kabul. If not, she should have viewed this BBC photo essay “Kabul rises again”. One photo shows a music shop selling the latest electric guitars.
Perhaps Pellegrinelli had a restricted word count or a conservative Wall Street Journal editor that didn’t allow her to address everything.
Unfortunately, a number of Western publications continue to spread misinformed history and analysis on Afghanistan. To all writers and editors out there, please do your homework before you write about a country’s history and culture. It helps us all.
TV Afghanistan interview with Hussein Arman, Afghan guitarist and instructor at Music School of Kabul from the 1980s.
(note: from 8:06 – 9:24, footage of the music school and its students are shown).
