Da Capo

This evening I went to the Sheldonian Theatre to hear the Afghan Women's Orchestra (or Zohra ensemble – actually young women, mostly in their teens – see extra). 

This is their second tour. Two years ago they wrote about their first: 'This isn’t just their first time outside Afghanistan, it’s the first time stage fright is the only fear they must brave. Back home, a performance by Zohra may be met with abuse or threats – or even bombs. Here they can – quite literally – show their true colours. Cloaked in exquisitely embroidered costumes ... the young members of the Zohra orchestra are ready to share their culture and their message of hope with the world.'

Music in Afghanistan was censored from 1978 and banned from 1996 until 2001. Those found playing or selling music were imprisoned and tortured, and many musicians fled the country.

In 2010, musicologist Ahmad Sarmast returned to Kabul from exile in Australia and set up the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM). The following year ANIM unveiled its Afghan Youth Orchestra, in which boys and girls, controversially, played alongside each other. In 2014 Sarmast was injured and lost his hearing in a suicide attack by the Taliban who accused him of corrupting the youth of Afghanistan. Surgery in Australia restored partial hearing to one ear but he stills suffers from PTSD.

But he continued to lead ANIM. In 2015 a trumpeter asked permission to start a girls' band. So many of the young women wanted to join that it became an orchestra. 

This second tour of the orchestra, whose musicians, from provinces all across Afghanistan, are the first women in their country to study music in over 30 years, has been paid for by crowdfunding organised by the Orchestra of St John's Smith Square. The girls are being accommodated by Somerville College in Oxford and during their week here they have played with young Oxfordshire musicians. The trumpeter, though, isn't here. Her family have taken her back home and ANIM does not know if she will be allowed to rejoin them.

I took this picture during the applause and cheering at the end of the concert. It's Negin Khpolwak, Afghanistan's first female conductor, and Ahmad Sarmast hugging each other with, on the right, Lauren Braithwaite, a musicologist who works at ANIM and who arranged most of the Afghan, Indian and European music they performed. They are all in the embrace of Cayenna Ponchione, committed to social justice through the arts and Associate Conductor of the Orchestra of St Johns.

Such a privilege to be here. I watched this concert through tears.