Voices of the 18th OxHRF: The Power of Music - Championing Human Rights, Resilience and Aspirations.

“They can take our instruments and break them, but they cannot remove music from our hearts and minds”
EL Laskar writes: Our last two posts centred on the experiences of children and young people who get caught in the ravages of war. The emotional and physical toll on their development can be crippling. 1 in 4 of the world's children live in a disaster area or war zone and they are reported to be the first and most affected. The evidence points to the fact that despite all the work that individuals, agencies and governments are doing with children and young people, they are still the ‘invisible majority’. I invite you to take a moment away from reading and just think about the enormity of what has been shared.

It is not difficult to join the dots - children and youth are the future and therefore it is imperative that we listen to their voices, co-create spaces and support opportunities for healing, learning, aspiring and thriving.  As UNICEF points out, children and youth show remarkable resilience and they have power in their story telling. It is part of our responsibilities as a global community to stand in solidarity with them and help them to create a new narrative for themselves.

This year the festival exhibited a selection of photos from the Afghan Women’s Orchestra called ‘Zohra’ and invited Lauren Braithwaite, a DPhil student at the University of Oxford to speak at our opening event about the role of music in resilience. In 2017 Lauren became Artistic Director and co-conductor of the Zohra Women’s Orchestra and led the group on tours to India, Portugal, Sweden, and the UK. We introduce you to the stories of the brave young Afghan women musicians of Zohra.

Lauren Braithwaite writes: "The Zohra orchestra is a showcase of the resilience and determination of Afghan youth and women to continue fighting for their rights." 

These are the words of Wahidullah Waissi speaking about the Zohra orchestra’s recent tour to Australia during which 24 young female musicians, most of whom are orphans or from poverty-stricken provinces in Afghanistan, performed a number of concerts in Melbourne and at the Sydney Opera House. The young women’s motives for performing are not primarily aesthetic but instead symbolic. When people think of Afghanistan, images of war, poverty, and the violation of women’s rights are usually the first to come to mind. However, as Negin Khpolwak, the first female conductor in the country’s history explains: “We want to show the good face of Afghanistan. Yes, we have problems but it's not all about bomb blasts and men with Kalashnikovs. We also have beautiful culture and brave women fighting for our rights.”

The Zohra orchestra, which is part of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul, is made up of 24 young women between the ages of 14 and 21 and is named after the Persian goddess for music. The ensemble is a unique combination of Afghan traditional and western classical instruments and they play a wide repertoire of music from traditional Afghan pop songs by Nashenas and Ahmad Zahir to classical works by Grieg and Beethoven. In Afghanistan where most women are expected to get married at 16 to a family member such as their cousin, and a lot of people think that girls shouldn’t be allowed to play music, having an orchestra just for women is a big step forward for gender equality. In recent months they have also become a broader symbol for Afghan women’s human rights and musical rights which have been fiercely fought for since the end of the Taliban regime but which are now again under threat amidst the ongoing peace negotiations. 

Lauren Braithwaite at the OXHRF opening

But the women of Zohra are defiant, resilient, and determined to continue playing: “They can take our instruments and break them, but they cannot remove music from our hearts and minds” said Negin during Zohra’s tour to the UK last year. Negin’s words speak not only of the Taliban’s strict censorship of cultural expression, which included a complete ban on music along with films, board games, images of humans, and reading non-religious books. She is also alluding to the deeply entrenched and widely held socio-cultural and religious opinions towards. Many families simply cannot let go of entrenched beliefs that women playing musical instruments is shameful due to its historical associations with other un-Islamic practices. Music education is not something a young girl should be doing. As a result, many of Zohra’s members face daily challenges, condemnation, and have even received death threats from their families, local communities and local mullahs. In an interview with Channel 4 News, Negin explained how she lost her entire extended family because she learned music:

"My father doesn't speak with his brothers because of me, because he allowed me to study and learn music, therefore my uncles have cut ties with my father and all of us.”

Her uncle even told her “Wherever I see you, I'll kill you. You are a shame for us."

The pressure from families has even led some girls to end their music education prematurely. When the orchestra went on their first overseas tour to Europe where they performed at the closing ceremony of the World Economic Forum, the event was reported on national television news which was seen by thousands, if not millions, of people all over Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the family of one of the tabla players saw her playing on tv and immediately stopped her from attending school. The decision was taken by her uncle who said that girls should not be seen playing music on TV, it’s un-Islamic and it had brought shame on his family.

However, ironically, it is exactly the orchestral unit provoking this negative condemnation which provides these girls with the strength and resilience they need to fight back and stand up for their right to be musicians. I had the honour of directing the orchestra for two and a half years during which time I often heard the girls talk about the orchestra being an orchestra of sisters, a kind of musical family, and that if they were going to do something, it would be together or not at all. If one member didn’t come to a rehearsal, an important link in the chain mail was missing, not only from a musical point of view, but also in terms of solidarity.

But it is also the music itself which offers the girls a space in which they can escape the gendered violence of the outside world and the challenges of daily life. As a social activity, music acts as a therapeutic nexus, simultaneously engendering and relying upon a foundation of fundamental human rights for its success as an agent of personal and social change. It is under these circumstances that students display remarkable determination to overcome the stress and trauma of conflict, poverty, and other war-related social challenges. Tia DeNora, Professor of the Sociology of Music at Exeter University proposed a unique concept of a "musical asylum" in which individuals and groups can furnish an environment for themselves which enables them to escape from hostility and provides a space for being well. During my time working at the school, I realised that ANIM acts as a place of security and refuge, both physically – with the school’s high blast-proof walls and 24-hour security – but also conceptually as a place where individuals can use music to create a safe space for themselves. 

A recent report by Human Rights Watch found that more than half of the Afghan population suffer from some form of trauma-related mental health issue and that 85 percent of the Afghan population had experienced or witnessed at least one traumatic event. Thirty-six percent of the country live in extreme poverty and another estimated 37 percent live just above the poverty line, just like Jamila and Safia, two of the youngest students in the ensemble. They are sisters living in an area of Kabul called Chendawal, high up on the hill where people illegally build their own houses from bricks and mud and whatever other materials they can get. Before joining the school, they would spend up to 12 hours a day at the market or on the side of the road selling plastic bags or chewing gum to help support their family. In order to take them off the streets and get them to music school, the family are given USD$30 a month stipend to compensate for the loss of earnings. 

What I noticed for these girls was that music gave them a sense of identity; instead of being Jamila and Safia, the street-working kids, they became Jamila the flute player, and Safia the clarinet player. Suddenly they were appreciated for something positive in their lives and they felt a sense of pride and self-worth as players in the ensemble. In the weeks and months after I started teaching them, they became noticeably happier and more carefree, because they were doing something fun and making new friends, rather than being on the dangerous streets of Kabul. Over time I realised that music for many of these kids was not about passing exams, getting the top mark in their theory paper, or getting a principal chair in the orchestra, things that in the west are commonly associated with achievement in this field. Almost all of the students at the school had lost close family members in the war or had seen bombs going off and so for them, music was a way of escaping these painful experiences or simply being given the opportunity to have a childhood. In some cases, music had a therapeutic role to play in students’ lives; for those who had been close to bombs or suicide attacks, exposure to loud and unexpected sounds would cause extreme stress and anxiety. But playing music enabled them to exercise their hearing and become comfortable with a range of sounds in a safe space. But most importantly, knowing they had a brighter future to work for gave them the resilience to overcome the daily challenges they faced in their personal lives.

The story of ANIM and the Zohra orchestra is just one example of the growing role music and the arts in general can have in affording resilience in adverse conditions. The Pavarotti Music Centre in Mostar, for example, continues to help victims of the Bosnian war come together, build cross-cultural bridges, and overcome their traumatic experiences in a safe and supportive musical environment, while in refugee camps around the world, music is increasingly being utilised as a way of helping refugees to cope with the situation they have been forced into. 

Ten minutes is really not enough time to explore such a huge topic as "music and resilience" to the extent it deserves. However, I hope the story of the Zohra orchestra has demonstrated music’s ability to enable young women to overcome poverty, defy family and community condemnation and even death threats to pursue their musical careers and to share a positive image of their country to the world. Quoting Negin one final time, “If you don't stand up, you will have no future. I want to pave the way for other girls.”

Elizabeth Laskar writes: This inspiring story is a reminder that the creative arts are life lines and need to be part of the rhetoric when developing projects within the humanitarian sector. As the great Blues legend BB King (1925-2015) said “The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.” Music can provide a path to a future. 

The OxHRF would like to thank Lauren Braithwaite for sharing the story of Zohra and speaking at our opening.