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Abstract
This paper examines the two largely separate worlds of audio recordings of Afghan music made for the Afghan market and Afghan music recordings that have found their way into the ‘world music’ market. It shows how recordings aimed at the two domains have remained largely independent, and offers some suggestions as to how and why this should be. The new Afghan popular music on compact disc, privileging the use of electronic keyboards with their programmable percussion libraries, is of little interest to the world music audience, which seeks the exotic timbres and ‘authenticity’ of non-Western instruments. Packaging, lack of content information and the marketing of Afghan-produced recordings are also part of the explanation. Conversely, recordings of traditional music represent an Afghan culture that Afghans have moved away from in their quest for modernity. The ‘two different worlds’ syndrome probably applies to other transnational communities whose creative centres lie in the diaspora rather than in the original homeland.
Acknowledgements
Much of this paper was written while I was a Visiting Fellow in the Monash Asia Institute and School of Music—Conservatorium at Monash University, Melbourne. The research reported here was supported by grants from the British Academy (2000), the Committee for Central and Inner Asia (2002), the Arts and Humanities Research Council Diasporas, the Migration and Identities Programme (2006) and the Leverhulme Trust (2008–10). My thanks are due to Yama Yari, Veronica Doubleday, Stephen Cottrell and Elizabeth Kinder for their comments and advice. I would also like to thank the two anonymous readers who made extensive suggestions for the improvement of the paper.
Notes
1. The term Afghan is ambiguous. At one level it is synonymous with Pashtun, the name of the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, who speak Pashto; while at another level it refers to any citizen of Afghanistan. Many non-Pashtuns from Afghanistan prefer the term Afghanistani, in both noun and adjectival forms (see Bezhan Citation2008, 21). I have used this new term in my title to signal my awareness of the issue, but continue to use the term Afghan for convenience. The word khareji means ‘foreigner’. Living amongst Afghans in the United States and Australia I observed that non-Afghan American and Australian citizens were often referred to as kharejis by Afghans.
2. For a summary of earlier research on music and migration by Adelaida Reyes [0](Citation1999) and others, see Baily and Collyer Citation2006.
3. I obtained a photocopy of this catalogue from the EMI Archives in Hayes, London, in 1993. The archive did not hold any of the records listed. Some of them have been re-released in CD format by Watan Music in the United States.
4. The musical significance of these communities is discussed by McNeil (2004, 11–38).
5. The new radio station was linked to a more powerful transmitter, which gave Afghan radio an international reach to neighbouring countries. In this way it was transformed from Radio Kabul to Radio Afghanistan. In the late 1970s, when television broadcasting began from Kabul, the organisation was renamed Afghan Radio and Television (RTA).
6. A sequence showing Salaam Logari playing at a Spring country fair can be found in the film The Annual Cycle of Music in Herat (Baily Citation1982).
7. I have borrowed the useful term ‘cassette culture’ from Peter Manuel (Citation1993).
8. See Financial Times Weekend Supplement, 14/15 February 2009, p. 32.
9. Taraki was the first of four Presidents of Afghanistan from the leftist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan. The fourth, Dr Najibullah, lost power to the new Coalition of Mujahideen parties in 1992 and was lynched by a mob when the Taliban took Kabul in 1996 (Misdaq Citation2006, 185).
10. Shah Wali Khan can be found singing in my film Amir: An Afghan Refugee Musician's Life in Peshawar, Pakistan (Baily Citation1985).
11. The film Scenes of Afghan Music. London, Kabul, Hamburg, Dublin has a conversation with a cassette/CD shop proprietor who explains how he used to sell music cassettes secretly and was twice apprehended and imprisoned in the notorious Pul-e Charki Prison. He adds that he still has a stock of Taliban cassettes but they are stored at home, no doubt ready to be brought back to the shop should the need arise. This scene also provides a good representation of a typical music shop in Kabul in 2006.
12. An interview with Eshpari is included in the film Tablas and Drum Machines (Baily Citation2005b).
13. In 2006 I found only one such store in London, Sure Bazaar in West Ealing, but it changed hands in the middle of the year and the new (Afghan) proprietors stopped selling CDs. In London most CDs would seem to be sold at concerts, where it is common for a trader to set up a stall at the back of the hall.
14. The Kayhan Music shop and studio can be seen in Scenes of Afghan Music (Baily Citation2007).
15. I am grateful to Daniel O'Donnell for providing information about these early Western recordings of Afghan music.
16. Khaled Arman had a luthier add extra frets all the way up the neck to make it more like the guitar, added an extra bass string, and altered the bridge to make it more like that of the Indian sarod.
17. Perchard (Citation2006) gives an exemplary account of appreciating the singing of Umm Kalthum while having no knowledge of Arabic, the language in which she sings.
18. Madadi makes this comment in the film Scenes of Afghan Music (Baily Citation2007).
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