Afghan rockers struggle to hit right note
TEHRAN: The band gathers in a small carpentry shop on the outskirts of Iran’s capital, with sawdust still in the air but the buzzing of the jigsaws now exchanged for the soft feedback of an amplifier.
A drummer strikes his snare four times and Hakim Ebrahimi opens with the first dreamy notes of Afghanistan, the sound of their Metallica-inspired rock ballad filling the air. The four rockers that make up the band, known as Arikayn, are Afghan refugees, and their struggles mirror those of millions of other Afghans who have fled to Iran during decades of war.
Iran is home to one of the world’s largest and most-protracted refugee crises. More than 3 million Afghans, including over 1 million who entered without legal permission, live in the Islamic Republic, according to United Nations estimates.
Three of the band’s four original members were born in Iran, including female guitarist and vocalist Soraya Hosseini, drummer Akbar Bakhtiary and Rezai. Ebrahimi came to Iran as a child.
They formed the band Arikayn, which is Dari for “Lantern”, in 2013.
Arikayn’s music recalls Metallica, not the speed-metal shredding of Master of Puppets but rather the introspective ballad of Nothing Else Matters. Ebrahimi, who said his icon is Metallica frontman James Hetfield, evokes his guitar work in the band’s song Afghanistan.
“Here is Afghanistan, human’s life is cheap; the way to heaven is from here, killing a human is easy here,” he sings.
By day, Ebrahimi works in the carpentry shop to support himself. Other band members have day jobs as well, though Hosseini relies on help from her mother. Like other Afghans, they face challenges in finding work in a country that had high unemployment even before the US began restoring sanctions.
Afghans also face discrimination in Iran. The band says they were turned away from a once-popular Tehran concert series because they were immigrants.
Like others in Iran’s vibrant arts scene, they must contend with hard-liners who view Western culture as corrupt and object to women performing in public. At one of only two Tehran concerts the band gave, at Tehran University, Hosseini said she was not allowed to play her guitar on stage, and was only able to sing background vocals.
“They did not tell me directly that I cannot play the guitar on stage, but they made me understand,” she said. “I felt strange because it was my first time on stage. I was stressed out that I might ruin it.’’
However, reality has come crashing down on the group. Some Afghans in Iran are beginning to leave the country over its economic problems.
Bakhtiary, the band’s drummer, left Iran along with other Afghan migrants hoping to reach Europe. After a time in Turkey, he made it to Italy, where he is now jobless.
Rezai, the band’s bassist, prefers his work at a nearby tailor shop to practicing.
“I need this money so that my family and I can have an easier life,” he said. For now, Arikayn’s only audience is those who work in Ebrahimi’s carpentry shop.