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Ethnomusicological Research in Afghanistan > Afghanistan Ethnomusicological Research in Afghanistan: Past, Present, and Future Little was known in the West about the music of Afghanistan until the 1950s, when a few LPs of an ethnographic kind were pub- week visit to Fremont, California in Research > lished, such as the Lubtchansky disc Afghanistan et Iran in the Collection du Musée de l’Homme, and the UNESCO collection A 2000 was particularly revealing; the Afghanistan Musical Anthology of the Orient, recordings made by Alain Daniélou. Afghanistan was typified as “The Crossroads of Asia”, a term new kinds of Afghan music being pro- which implied a variegated cultural mix. In the 1960s, several ethnomusicologists worked in Afghanistan, notably Felix Hoerburger duced in the USA, bringing together from West Germany, Josef Zoch from Czechoslovakia, and Mark Slobin and Lorraine Sakata from the USA. My wife, Veronica Dou- elements of Afghan and Western bleday, and I were active between 1973 and 1977. Since then, there has been little opportunity for research. music, were certainly involved in the creation of a new Afghan-American By John Baily three versions of the Herati dutar, and identity (Baily 2000). another Afghan lute, the rubab.1 hen I started my research on Two years later, I returned to The Present and Future W music in Afghanistan in 1973, I Afghanistan for a second year of field- In response to the developments, held a Social Science Research Council work on “the anthropology of music in Goldsmiths College, University of Lon- Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship in Herat”, which involved confronting a don, has created an Afghanistan Music the Department of Social Anthropology diffuse set of issues. I conducted Unit (AMU). The purposes of AMU are at The Queen’s University of Belfast, in research on a wide range of music mak- twofold. Firstly, it aims to document collaboration with anthropologist and ing: urban and rural; amateur and pro- the process of re-establishing music in ethnomusicologist John Blacking. Our fessional; secular and sacred; and male Afghanistan, especially with respect to research project focused on recent and female. With regard to the last, radio and television broadcasting, and changes in the Herati dutar, a type of Veronica Doubleday’s research was cru- performances of live music in tradi- long-necked lute. Between 1950 and cial, for she worked with women per- tional venues such as theatres, wedding 1965 this was transformed from a small formers and professional musicians, an festivities, Ramadan concerts, and two-stringed instrument of rural ama- area of music making practically inac- spring country fairs (see Baily 1988). teur music making to a much larger and cessible to me. She also learned to per- Music is a sensitive indicator of wider more versatile instrument with fourteen form as part of her research, to sing and SPACH. of courtesy Powell, Josephine attitudes, especially those appertaining strings played by professional urban to play the frame drum. She eventually Fragment of a stone relief from Ghazni illustrating female dancers framed by ornamental borders to modernity and liberalism. Freedom musicians (Baily 1976). This morpho- became a member of her teacher’s with scrolls. Formerly Kabul Museum. of musical expression suggests that logical transformation was of great inter- women’s band, going out to play at other freedoms and human rights are est in its own right as an example of dra- women’s wedding parties. coup of Taraki took place, followed by Ismail Khan, was peaceful and under- also in place. Secondly, the AMU seeks matic musical change in a seemingly Our work also extended into Kabul, more than twenty years of civil war. going extensive reconstruction. But not only to document the “re-making very traditional society, and also prom- with its large musicians’ quarter (the many restrictions were in place, and the of music”, but to assist with the process ised to provide new insights into rela- Kucheh Kharabat). This took in several Back in the UK, we both went situation of music and musicians was when appropriate. Afghans in exile tionships that exist between human bod- hundred hereditary musicians, some of through a long period of writing up our symptomatic of these. Musicians had have a wealth of professional expertise ies and musical instruments. whom descended from court musicians data, or at least some of it. Veronica to be licensed and constrained to per- and many are ready to go back to Having studied experimental psy- brought from India in the 1860s. Radio Doubleday published her classic of nar- forming songs in praise of the Muja- undertake voluntary work to help chology for seven years, culminating in Afghanistan was of particular interest rative anthropology Three Women of heddin or of a mystical nature. They restore their country. Another positive doctoral research on human movement as a focus of musical activity and cre- Herat, while I published the more con- were also to perform these without development concerns education; and motor control, I was in a position ativity. The popular music disseminat- ventional ethnomusicological mono- amplification. Despite such constraints, music was never part of the school cur- to investigate the changes in the ed by the radio station since the early graph Music of Afghanistan: Profession- musicians were not allowed to perform riculum in Afghanistan and there has human/musical instrument interface 1950s had achieved widespread cur- al Musicians in the City of Herat. To a in public, but they could play at home already been a request from a local that occurred as the instrument rency and constituted an important considerable extent, these two books and in the private houses of their minister in Herat to a UK NGO about changed, from two to three to five and arena for the emergence of an Afghan deal with the same people, but in Three patrons. Cassettes of music were freely education programmes and the avail- then fourteen strings. I worked with a national identity (Baily 1994). Further- Women of Herat all the names have available in the bazaar, and a little abilty of any materials related to arts large number of dutar players, concen- more, the modernism of radio broad- been changed. Together they provide an music was played on local radio and tel- and music. trating on a sample of fifteen individu- casting had enabled a number of ama- unusually full account of music mak- evision. In Kabul, the restrictions were The Freemuse report took for grant- als, recording their performances, later teur musicians to cross over to ing in a traditional Central Asian city, less severe, and in Mazar-e Sharif the ed that the Taliban would remain in filming ten of them playing a standard professional status and had also with largely separate domains of climate was even more free. The restric- control of most, if not all, of repertory of five tunes, and making allowed a number of women singers to women and men. Our joint research tions of the Rabbani period anticipated Afghanistan for the foreseeable future, extensive recorded interviews. As part achieve star status. We left Afghanistan publication in 1995 also made a signif- the complete ban on music imposed and made various recommendations of my research, I also learned to play in 1977. A year later the Communist icant contribution to the literature on when the Taliban came to power, when intended to consolidate Afghan music musical enculturation. My studies of audio cassettes of music and musical in the transnational community. The the rubab in Kabul and Herat also instruments were destroyed.2 The completely unforseen departure of the resulted in detailed studies of Afghan Dutch researcher Jan van Belle was the Taliban radically changed the situation. Ethnomusicology art music (Baily 1981 and 1997). only ethnomusicologist actively per- One of the first signs of the end of Tal- The coup of 1978 made the very idea forming fieldwork in Afghanistan after iban control in a city or town was the Baily, John, “Can you stop the birds singing?”: The Censorship of Music in Afghanistan. of further fieldwork impossible; the the Taliban took Kabul. He made sev- sound of music in the streets and over Freemuse: Copenhagen (2001). With accompanying CD (also available on “iron curtain” was now pulled across eral hazardous recording trips to parts local airwaves. In the past, music was www.freemuse.org). this part of Central Asia. There was lit- of north-eastern Afghanistan free of closely connected with festive occasions Doubleday, Veronica, Three Women of Herat. London: Jonathan Cape (1988). tle reliable news from Herat, described Taliban control [see article by J. van and, as such, was appropriate to mark Doubleday, Veronica, and John Baily, “Patterns of Musical Development among by Afghans as “our Hiroshima” (some- Belle in this issue]. the end of Taliban oppression. Bring- Children in Afghanistan” in Children in the Muslim Middle East Today, Elizabeth thing of an exaggeration, as I later dis- After my visit to Afghanistan in ing out the previously carefully hidden Warnock Fernea (ed.). Austin: Texas University Press (1995); 431-446. covered). In 1985, now as an anthropo- 1994, I started to become interested in music cassettes, sound systems, and Doubleday, Veronica, John Baily, Jan van Belle, Nabi Misdaq, “Afghanistan” chapter logical film-maker at the UK’s National the whole question of music in the musical instruments was an act of defi- in Alison Arnold (ed.), The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Vol. V, New Film and Television School, I went to Afghan transnational community. How ance. Above all, the sound of music was York: Garland/ Routledge (2000); 803-841. Peshawar for three months to research was music being used to maintain and a sign of a return to normality.
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