‘The Taliban tried to silence us’: the musicians who escaped to Portugal | Afghanistan
A stone’s throw from Portugal’s oldest cathedral and buzzing bakeries serving up pastéis de nata, the complex notes of a sitar fill the ground floor of an unassuming building in the northern city of Braga. The soft strumming belies the radical nature of the mission that has taken root here: to preserve Afghan music and use it as a tool to counter those who want to eradicate it. “The Taliban tried to silence us,” said Ahmad Sarmast, the director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, in his new office in Braga. “But we’re much stronger and much louder than yesterday.” Ahmad Sarmast: ‘Afghanistan is a totally silent nation.’ Photograph: Gonçalo Fonseca/The Guardian Launched in 2010 under the US-backed government in Kabul, the institute once stood as a powerful sign of the changes sweeping Afghanistan. Young male and female musicians – several of them from poor backgrounds – performed together in ensembles that ranged from a national symphony orchestra to Zohra, the country’s first all-female orchestra. They toured the world, offering up a singular blend …
