Afghan girls score a new future
All-female orchestra defies death threats to perform in Davos
KABUL // Death threats and discrimination have not stopped the women of Afghanistan’s first all-female orchestra. Zohra, an ensemble of 35 musicians aged 13 to 20, some of them orphans or from poor families, are charting a new destiny for themselves through music. Today and tomorrow, their reward will be performing before 3,000 chief executives and heads of state at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Led by conductor Negina Khpalwak, who will celebrate her 20th birthday on the return flight from Europe, the girls have overcome discrimination, accusations that they dishonour their families by performing, and even death threats to pursue their music. Dr Ahmad Sarmast, founder of Afghanistan’s National Institute of Music , or Anim, and the Zohra orchestra, understands the risks for women in Afghanistan who pursue music, which was banned during the Taliban’s 1996-2001 rule and is still frowned on in tightly gender-segregated, conservative Afghan society.
Zohra, he said, was “very symbolic” for Afghanistan.
“She is Afghanistan’s first female conductor,” he said proudly of Ms Khpalwak.
“It’s so hard for Afghan girls,” Ms Khpalwak said.
“Some fathers do not even let their daughters go to school, let alone music school. For them, women are for staying at home and cleaning up.”
Her parents defied her entire family to allow her to attend music lessons, she said.
“My grandmother told my dad: ‘ If you let Negina go to music school, you won’t be my son any more.’”
Ms Khpalwak’s family left their native Kunar province in east Afghanistan and moved to Kabul.
Life is hard in the capital and jobs are scarce, but “it is better than being dead”, said Ms Khpalwak, whose uncle promised her: “Wherever I see you, I’ll kill you. You are a shame for us.”
Her goal is to win a scholarship to study outside Afghanistan then return to become the conductor of the national orchestra.
Despite claims of progress, gender parity remains a distant dream in Afghanistan. According to a survey by the national bureau of statistics last year, just 19 per cent of Afghan women had attended school.
Of women and girls under the age of 25, only 36 per cent surveyed had been to school.
“If you don’t stand up you will have no future,” Ms Khpalwak said. “I want to pave the way for other girls.”
Music has offered Zohra’s girls the chance of another life. Some of those in the orchestra were once children working in the street.
At 18, violinist Zarifa Adiba has already performed at Carnegie Hall in New York.
In Davos, she will also conduct four pieces as the second conductor of the orchestra. Ms Adiba, whose mother was never afforded the chance to go to school, believes that it is up to her and her contemporaries to change the nation’s mentality – although she concedes it will take “at least” a generation.
“I wish to apply to Yale University, my first choice, or to Harvard or Stanford,” she said.
“I will study and make a good personality for myself and then I will come back as a positive person.
“Do you think Michelle Obama will be in Davos?” she asked suddenly.
“I have been listening to all her speeches.
“When I hear her speaking, I feel proud to be a woman. I love Michelle Obama.”