The Afghan Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall with its conductor, Tiago Moreira da Silva, in the back on the right with outstretched arms (Photo by Jennifer Taylor/ From New York Classical Review)
The refugee Afghan Youth Orchestra wowed audiences at Carnegie Hall in New York and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. under the baton of its Portuguese conductor.
For the August concerts in the United States, Tiago Moreira da Silva had arranged collaboratively seven of the 16 pieces, one of which was his original composition, An Afghan in New York.
"Minutes before the (Carnegie Hall) concert began, the young performers gathered in a room steps from the historic stage. Nerves and excitement filled the air as the students of music practiced playing their instruments: violins, flutes, clarinets, trumpets, saxophones and traditional Afghan instruments, such as the lute-like sitar and rubab, and the tabla, or hand-played drums, reported NBC News (August 7).
"Wednesday's concert at Carnegie Hall marked the institute's first performance in the United States in more than a decade. The audience erupted in applause for the performers as they entered the jam-packed hall and headed toward the stage."
Shabana Gulestani played sitar. (Photo by Jennifer Taylor/From New York Classical Review)
The Afghan Youth Orchestra is the premier ensemble of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music. Nearly three years ago, the 284 students and teachers of the music institute fled its country for fear of death. It accepted the quick and ready invitation of Portugal as its safe haven.
"The subtext of Carnegie Hall's youth festival World Orchestra Week, which wrapped Wednesday night with a rousing concert by the Afghan Youth Orchestra has always been hope," wrote New York Classical Review (August 8).
"Hope that classical music -- seemingly forever endangered by competing amusements, budget deficits, and an aging audience -- will live on through the love and dedication of the young players whose skills have been wowing audiences all week. Hope that the matchless energy of young people can be channeled into enterprises that make the world a better place.
"And in the case of these musicians from Afghanistan, hope that music itself will someday have a country to come home to."
The Afghan Youth Orchestra consists of 45 male and female musicians between the ages of 14 and 20 who perform on traditional Afghan and Western instruments, according to the Carnegie Hall program notes, Originally formed in 2010 by Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, the Afghan Youth Orchestra has represented Afghan music, nationally and internationally, in many prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center, where it first performed in 2013, and Oman's Royal Opera House in Muscat.
While exiled in Portugal, the orchestra debuted in October 2022 at Gulbenkian Concert Hall in Lisbon.
Since then, the Afghan Youth Orchestra has accepted invitations from various European countries. Recently, it performed concerts in the United Kingdom entitled Breaking the Silence and Music for Freedom. In 2023, the youth orchestra played in Switzerland, Germany and Tajikistan.
"Today, Afghanistan is a silent nation."
"We're fighting the beast with the beauty of Afghan music," Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, reiterated to CBS News (August 8).
He was referring to the Taliban, an Afghan Islamic fundamentalism movement which stormed back into power three years ago after the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces. Music has not been banned formally as it was when the Taliban first came to power in 1996 until 2001, reported NBC News (November 18, 2021).
However, music has been silenced and musicians choked by fear.
"While Afghanistan has a rich, centuries-long music tradition, and the Qu'ran does not explicitly prohibit music or make it "un-Islamic", the Taliban is using its extremist interpretation of Islam to justify erasing history and identity, of which music is a mainstay," said historian Mejgan Massoumi, of Stanford University, according to NBC News.
"Musicians are terrified," said Katherine Butler Schofield, senior lecturer in South Asian music and history at King's College London.
The Afghanistan National Institute of Music had been viewed as a threat. The Taliban regularly targeted the school, reported NBC News (August 7). A suicide bombing at a performance in 2014 also killed an audience member and injured many more. It nearly killed Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, according to the BBC (December 6, 2018). Surgeons removed 11 pieces of shrapnel from his head. They restored partial hearing to the music school director's torn eardrums.
WQXR, New York's classical music radio station, interviewed Dr. Sarmast during the intermission of the Carnegie Hall performance, which was broadcast live. Dr. Sarmast, son of an eminent Afghan musician, composer and conductor, had left Afghanistan during its ongoing civil war in the 1990s. He continued his musical studies in Russia and Australia before returning home, reported the BBC.
"I feel very, very proud. I'm very proud that in spite of all the challenges that exist against us and all the threats that exist, not just against me personally but against every member of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, these young musicians are appearing today at Carnegie Hall. They had been risking their lives every day to play music, which is taken for granted outside of Afghanistan. But in Afghanistan, people have been risking their lives to play music, to make music and to listen to music.
"Today, Afghanistan is the only country, where its women and girls are not allowed to go to school. . . . Today, Afghanistan is a silent nation."
Why Portugal?
Trumpeter Zohra Ahmadi, 15, told NBC News (August 8): "It was a shocking moment when you realized that Afghanistan is finished. "It was like we were dead."
Dr. Ahmad Sarmast propelled himself into action. He knew that he had to get help quickly to evacuate the school's staff and students. Immediately, he dispatched appeals to government officials in the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Portugal.
"Portugal was the only government around the world that positively and promptly responded," he said, "And offered a group asylum for 284 people -- the entire school community."
The school has re-established itself in Braga, a city in northern Portugal with a 2,000-year history dating back to ancient Rome.
Conductor From Maia, Porto
Tiago Moreira da Silva has been teaching at the music institute for one year. He conducted the second half of the concert. During the WQXR interview, the native of Maia, Porto, talked about the challenge of combining the traditions of Eastern and Western music.
"The way that they play and the tradition that they have do not follow a score normally. What they learn is through oral tradition. The teachers show them how to do it, and then they practice like this. They have no books. They have nothing to help them improve, just the teacher. Combining this way of approaching music together with the Western way is quite difficult," said the conductor, who began his musical study with the flute at Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo (School of Music and the Performing Arts in Porto).
"They know how to read music. They are very good at reading music. But the way they produce the sound, the way they phrase, the way they follow the rules of music, like rhythm, is sometimes not played exactly as what is written in the score, such as playing small ornaments in between, and we are not used to it. It's always trying to balance between both sides, the Western and this traditional South Asian way of playing music.
"In the beginning, I would talk with the musicians. We were sharing information on how to play the instruments and their range; what they can play or not; and how that is possible. It was teamwork building the arrangements. I was doing the arrangements of the new songs at home. Then, I would send the arrangements to the musicians, asking, 'Guys, is this possible or not? Then, I would rearrange it. Now, I know the instruments quite well. I don't know how to play, but I know what the musicians can play. It's easier now."
"The Rubab Is Amazing."
Tiago Moreira da Silva, born in 1991, pursued further studies, obtaining a master's degree in flute from the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Hamburg in 2016. Two years later, he completed a master's degree in piccolo at the Royal Conservatoire Antwerp.
In 2017, he became a graduate of the summer Lucerne Festival Academy, an orchestra-sized educational institution devoted to contemporary classical music. The academy was founded in 2003 by the French composer, Pierre Boulez, a leading figure in avant-garde music. At Lucerne, Moreira da Silva collaborated with such esteemed conductors as Sir Simon Rattle in prestigious venues such as the Berliner Philharmonie. He began his study of orchestral conducting at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon in 2018 and completed a master's degree at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa in 2022.
Now, as artistic director and chief conductor of the Afghan Youth Orchestra, his education has taken a different tack from formal to hands-on informal. He told WQXR that his favorite instrument in the Afghan orchestra is the lute-like rubab, the national instrument of the country. It derives its name from the Arabic rebab.
"The rubab is amazing. It's like a guitar, but with only three strings and with (as many as 15) sympathetic strings as well. They play three strings, but then the other ones ring by themselves. It's a very unique instrument. The sound is very unique. The way of playing it is very unique. The range is not big, but the color of the sound is very interesting. I think everyone will be curious and will love it."
The Portuguese musician leaned on the rubab in his composition, An Afghan in New York, based on the well-known song Pa Loyo Ghro, by Ustad Mohammed Din Zakhil, in Pashto, one of the two most prominent languages in Afghanistan, which has 40 distinct ones, and the Hollywood film An American in Paris, according to Carnegie Hall's program notes.
"It begins with an evocation of a towering Afghan mountain, lush with dense foliage and partially obscured by low-hanging clouds. Following a thunderstorm, two characters are introduced, represented by the rubab and the sitar. This leads into the Dilemma section, where the theme from Pa Loyo Ghro is intertwined with an original motif that symbolizes the need to leave. The second theme, Resignation, is nostalgic in mood, and the final section, A New Beginning with Hope, reprises the first theme in a major key, showing that happiness can be found even in moments of profound sorrow."
A Concert in Two Parts
Tiago Moreira da Silva conducted the second half of the Carnegie Hall concert, in which An Afghan in New York was played along with Afghan orchestral music and a performance from Zohra, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music's all-women orchestra named for the Persian goddess of music, reported NBC News (August 7).
Zohra performed Zendagi by Ahmad Zahir, the "Afghan Elvis". The musician's daughter, Shabnam Zahir, characterized his music as "a common thread that brings Afghans together. There are so many ethnic groups in Afghanistan; he tuned into that, and would do concerts in all these different locations. He'd change people's views of one another," according to the BBC (December 6, 2018).
"A pop culture sensation and the son of Afghanistan's former prime minister: during a booming 'golden age' in the 60s and 70s, he was a prolific recording artist and a music idol for the masses. Zahir's music drew from Persian poetry as well as Indian classical styles, and it increasingly revealed a political edge, criticizing the Soviet-backed Marxist regime, which had seized power in Afghanistan following a 1978 military coup."
Also, in the second half of the Carnegie concert, Afghan and Western instruments came together to produce a medley that married Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Johannes Brahms to the popular Sarzamin E Man.
"For Sarzamin E Man by Amir Jan Saboori, the full complement of Western and Afghan instruments that make up the Afghan Youth Orchestra came onstage at last, joined by a dozen players from another festival group, the European Union Youth Orchestra. Moreira da Silva led a performance that swung from delicate rubab and sitar solos over pizzicato to broad sweeping symphonic vistas. The hissing swell of cymbal crescendos added to the cinematic character of this and other pieces on the program," wrote New York Classical Review.
In the first half of the concert, musicians wore such traditional dress as shalwar kameez, a top and trouser outfit worn by men and women, and they sat on the floor, playing such instruments as the harmonium and, singing, at times, reported NBC News (August 8). The music was traditional Afghan and Qawwali, which is Sufi Islamic devotional singing.
"Qawwali music in the 1990s and early 2000s kind of swept through the rock world," said WQXR host John Schaefer. "The major rock stars like Pete Townsend in the Who, Peter Gabriel, Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, the late Jeff Buckley all became huge fans of Qawwali music. It is a Sufi devotional style, but it's often very upbeat. It sounds like party music, even though it is, in fact, prayer. . . . It's extremely ecstatic singing and often accompanied by harmonium and drums, and the essential handclaps as well.".
"The program concluded with two arrangements of well-known Afghan songs, with conductor Moreira da Silva encouraging the audience to clap along with their tricky 7/8 Afghan meter. Maste Mange Bar featured some virtuoso picking on the rubab, while Watan Ishq Tu Iftekharam -- originally a Greek song by Mikis Theodorakis, but adopted by Afghans as an unofficial national anthem after the fall of the Taliban in 2001 -- danced exuberantly through many variations, ranging from pianissimo to all-out fortissimo," wrote New York Classical Review.
Two Afghan dancers carried onstage the national flag of black, red and green -- not the Taliban white banner symbolizing purity -- and moved to the familiar beat, reported NBC News (August 8).
Tiago Moreira da Silva, in the back on the right with outstretched arms (Photo by Jennifer Taylor/ From New York Classical Review)
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