Where Music Matters
Music should mean something. It is the privilege of a lifetime to work at ANIM, teaching extraordinary Afghan children who delight and thrive despite unimaginably difficult circumstances. Making music with them and hearing them make music electrifies, and not just because they’re hard-working students who rise above poverty and discrimination. The giant hills that tower over all of Kabul suggest that every endeavor is mountain-sized, that every triumph is epic. The hills aren’t just alive with the sound of music: they know that it matters here more than anywhere.
I have lived and worked here now one year and one month, and the first month of my second year has been packed with meaningful performances. All of us were deeply honored to perform for President Hamid Karzai two weeks in a row: first at the School Bell ceremony, at which the President and other dignitaries ring a bell (our school bell, as it happened) to signify the beginning of a new academic year, and then the following week at the graduation of teachers.
As an American, the endorsement of music at such a high level meant a great deal to me. In the USA, the music I make is nearly irrelevant. Back home, I feel as though I’m sawing away some distance outside the city that contains the building that contains the room where the serious boys and girls are running the world. Obama has tried to improve things by featuring Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, Yo-Yo Ma, and Gabriela Montero at his inauguration, but our culture hasn’t caught up with him. Try to remember, if you can, the coverage of the most recent Grammy Awards. Were the awards for classical music even mentioned?
So therefore, I am proud to work in a country where for good or for ill, music means something to people. Ten years ago, the government at the time banned music, and in 2011, the President requests it two weeks in a row. His gesture matters, and I did not complain about the hard work of preparing these performances in a short time, because in the only country where music was recently banned, the President wanted it. Conducting the ANIM Orchestra for him was one of the highlights of my career, and when he came up to me after his speech, shook my hand, looked in my eye, and said in English, “You are doing a very great job,” it was a shining moment of my life.
Whether the audience is the President, the US Ambassador, regular Afghans, international donors, or friends, ANIM students have made all of us happy beyond words during the first month of the new year, 1390 in the Persian calendar. When the World Bank, a major donor for ANIM, visited, I wanted to feature two students I hadn’t often featured in the past. One was a young man who always sports a rebel’s haircut and a rascal’s grin. I had made the grave mistake of underestimating him, and he stunned us all with his brilliant, beautiful performance. At some point when I wasn’t looking, he figured out how to rebel by practicing longer and harder than anyone else, staying after school on Thursdays when everyone else had gone home. He figured out how to turn his rascal’s confidence into a showman’s confidence, owning his performance in the same sense that the finest concert artists own theirs. Give him time and support, and he will continue to surprise until the world knows his name, so I need not give it here. You can wait for it.
The other student also rewarded the faith I placed in her. Of all my little girl students who used to work on the street, she had struggled the most. She came from the most difficult and least supportive family background. When she first began studying with me, she was so shy that her voice never rose above a whisper. She seemed to want to disappear into the wall, so tightly would she press herself into it. As she lost her fear, her painfully thin face would frequently poke through my door and she would smile her greeting, silently hoping for a sticker or the chance to play the electric keyboard. She struggled for months to learn “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and when she got a passing grade on it at her first exam in July 2010, it was a miracle.
So then, we were all thrilled to see her stand up with confidence and played “Allegro” from the first Suzuki Book. Her rhythm problem, which had made it impossible for her to hold a steady tempo, had all but disappeared. Just before she played, Dr. Sarmast, whose superhuman efforts in founding and directing ANIM have made all of this possible, told me, “This performance could change her life.” I think it has.
Seeing one of our young rubab players rise to become a soloist, hearing two little girls play violin at the US Embassy for Women’s Day, smiling as two young percussion students offer an Afghan version of a Haydn tune with fierce concentration, and giving the first violin lessons to a tiny, happy little girl, barely taller than a small table, who is the younger sister of one of my students: these treasures have filled the first month of my second year. Even the stumbling blocks underscore music’s significance. One of my top students unexpectedly announced that music has no future in Afghanistan and that he would leave the school. To our immense relief, he changed his mind, but he can be forgiven his hesitation, given the controversial role music still plays here. Controversy. Musicians of the USA, do you remember what that is? It’s the sign that your art means something. When art comes up at all back home, people debate whether the government should fund it or not. They don’t debate whether the very idea of art is good or bad, and a concert is more typically a nice evening out on the town than a significant moment of history, a mountain towering over the pettiness of quotidian life.
Therefore, I was somewhat surprised to attend a concert tonight that didn’t seem to matter much to its performers. It mattered a great deal to the audience, who had showed up early to hear the renowned ghazal singer. Yet the performers hurriedly marched on stage, instruments still in cases, about 45 minutes after the concert started. After unpacking, the singer kept clearing his throat and pretending to start, before clearing his throat and pretending again. For at least the first hour, the performers kept repeatedly talking to the sound booth, trying to fix some infinitesimal problems with the sound system that I could not even detect. At some point, could they not have simply accepted the sound system and continued with the concert? Imagine attending a play where every few lines, the actors complain that the spotlight is not sufficiently focused on them or that come to think of it, their costume is a bit tight around the middle.
When they did begin properly, the tabla player in particular seemed more eager to amaze our ears than touch our souls. His finger-busting pyrotechnics were admittedly astounding, but was it necessary for him to throw his arms dramatically away from his instruments and motion for the audience to applaud him after every solo he took in the raga? I’m no expert about Hindustani music, but I know enough from working with and listening to musicians here, in Pakistan, and in the US to know that most of them are humble, dedicated to engaging the audience in the artistic experience of a concert rather than constantly tossing them out of that experience, and deeply focused on affecting our spirits, on pointing the way towards truth.
On occasion, the musicians did enter a selfless space of dedication to pure music, and then they approached greatness. The loudest applause of the evening came after the singer’s brother had been invited to come up and give a tabla solo. The sarangi player, who had watched from the audience, draped his shawl over the young man’s shoulders, and the audience roared. The sarangi player was my favorite of the musicians, and I would not be surprised to learn if he was also the most humble and friendly man among them.
Dr. Sarmast is a titan for founding and directing ANIM, but he, I, and my fellow teachers alike stand in awe of our students, whose daily courage, sacrifice, and dedication suggest advice all musicians would be wise to follow:
Free your music. Free it from your own doubt and that of others. Free it from stereotypes, from expectations, from your ego, from discrimination, from irrelevance. Make it matter. In every corner of the world, music resonates, showing us something outside ourselves yet within each of us. Free your music from that which would toss it in the box of unnecessary things. Know that you are no tiny rivulet in the mighty stream of history, but the tiny twig, changing its course.
Free your music, and your music will free you.
I have lived and worked here now one year and one month, and the first month of my second year has been packed with meaningful performances. All of us were deeply honored to perform for President Hamid Karzai two weeks in a row: first at the School Bell ceremony, at which the President and other dignitaries ring a bell (our school bell, as it happened) to signify the beginning of a new academic year, and then the following week at the graduation of teachers.
As an American, the endorsement of music at such a high level meant a great deal to me. In the USA, the music I make is nearly irrelevant. Back home, I feel as though I’m sawing away some distance outside the city that contains the building that contains the room where the serious boys and girls are running the world. Obama has tried to improve things by featuring Itzhak Perlman, Anthony McGill, Yo-Yo Ma, and Gabriela Montero at his inauguration, but our culture hasn’t caught up with him. Try to remember, if you can, the coverage of the most recent Grammy Awards. Were the awards for classical music even mentioned?
So therefore, I am proud to work in a country where for good or for ill, music means something to people. Ten years ago, the government at the time banned music, and in 2011, the President requests it two weeks in a row. His gesture matters, and I did not complain about the hard work of preparing these performances in a short time, because in the only country where music was recently banned, the President wanted it. Conducting the ANIM Orchestra for him was one of the highlights of my career, and when he came up to me after his speech, shook my hand, looked in my eye, and said in English, “You are doing a very great job,” it was a shining moment of my life.
Whether the audience is the President, the US Ambassador, regular Afghans, international donors, or friends, ANIM students have made all of us happy beyond words during the first month of the new year, 1390 in the Persian calendar. When the World Bank, a major donor for ANIM, visited, I wanted to feature two students I hadn’t often featured in the past. One was a young man who always sports a rebel’s haircut and a rascal’s grin. I had made the grave mistake of underestimating him, and he stunned us all with his brilliant, beautiful performance. At some point when I wasn’t looking, he figured out how to rebel by practicing longer and harder than anyone else, staying after school on Thursdays when everyone else had gone home. He figured out how to turn his rascal’s confidence into a showman’s confidence, owning his performance in the same sense that the finest concert artists own theirs. Give him time and support, and he will continue to surprise until the world knows his name, so I need not give it here. You can wait for it.
The other student also rewarded the faith I placed in her. Of all my little girl students who used to work on the street, she had struggled the most. She came from the most difficult and least supportive family background. When she first began studying with me, she was so shy that her voice never rose above a whisper. She seemed to want to disappear into the wall, so tightly would she press herself into it. As she lost her fear, her painfully thin face would frequently poke through my door and she would smile her greeting, silently hoping for a sticker or the chance to play the electric keyboard. She struggled for months to learn “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and when she got a passing grade on it at her first exam in July 2010, it was a miracle.
So then, we were all thrilled to see her stand up with confidence and played “Allegro” from the first Suzuki Book. Her rhythm problem, which had made it impossible for her to hold a steady tempo, had all but disappeared. Just before she played, Dr. Sarmast, whose superhuman efforts in founding and directing ANIM have made all of this possible, told me, “This performance could change her life.” I think it has.
Seeing one of our young rubab players rise to become a soloist, hearing two little girls play violin at the US Embassy for Women’s Day, smiling as two young percussion students offer an Afghan version of a Haydn tune with fierce concentration, and giving the first violin lessons to a tiny, happy little girl, barely taller than a small table, who is the younger sister of one of my students: these treasures have filled the first month of my second year. Even the stumbling blocks underscore music’s significance. One of my top students unexpectedly announced that music has no future in Afghanistan and that he would leave the school. To our immense relief, he changed his mind, but he can be forgiven his hesitation, given the controversial role music still plays here. Controversy. Musicians of the USA, do you remember what that is? It’s the sign that your art means something. When art comes up at all back home, people debate whether the government should fund it or not. They don’t debate whether the very idea of art is good or bad, and a concert is more typically a nice evening out on the town than a significant moment of history, a mountain towering over the pettiness of quotidian life.
Therefore, I was somewhat surprised to attend a concert tonight that didn’t seem to matter much to its performers. It mattered a great deal to the audience, who had showed up early to hear the renowned ghazal singer. Yet the performers hurriedly marched on stage, instruments still in cases, about 45 minutes after the concert started. After unpacking, the singer kept clearing his throat and pretending to start, before clearing his throat and pretending again. For at least the first hour, the performers kept repeatedly talking to the sound booth, trying to fix some infinitesimal problems with the sound system that I could not even detect. At some point, could they not have simply accepted the sound system and continued with the concert? Imagine attending a play where every few lines, the actors complain that the spotlight is not sufficiently focused on them or that come to think of it, their costume is a bit tight around the middle.
When they did begin properly, the tabla player in particular seemed more eager to amaze our ears than touch our souls. His finger-busting pyrotechnics were admittedly astounding, but was it necessary for him to throw his arms dramatically away from his instruments and motion for the audience to applaud him after every solo he took in the raga? I’m no expert about Hindustani music, but I know enough from working with and listening to musicians here, in Pakistan, and in the US to know that most of them are humble, dedicated to engaging the audience in the artistic experience of a concert rather than constantly tossing them out of that experience, and deeply focused on affecting our spirits, on pointing the way towards truth.
On occasion, the musicians did enter a selfless space of dedication to pure music, and then they approached greatness. The loudest applause of the evening came after the singer’s brother had been invited to come up and give a tabla solo. The sarangi player, who had watched from the audience, draped his shawl over the young man’s shoulders, and the audience roared. The sarangi player was my favorite of the musicians, and I would not be surprised to learn if he was also the most humble and friendly man among them.
Dr. Sarmast is a titan for founding and directing ANIM, but he, I, and my fellow teachers alike stand in awe of our students, whose daily courage, sacrifice, and dedication suggest advice all musicians would be wise to follow:
Free your music. Free it from your own doubt and that of others. Free it from stereotypes, from expectations, from your ego, from discrimination, from irrelevance. Make it matter. In every corner of the world, music resonates, showing us something outside ourselves yet within each of us. Free your music from that which would toss it in the box of unnecessary things. Know that you are no tiny rivulet in the mighty stream of history, but the tiny twig, changing its course.
Free your music, and your music will free you.
posted by William Harvey | 10:12 PM
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