BRAGA, Portugal — The Taliban tried to silence them, at times violently. The musicians from the Afghan Youth Orchestra have defiantly played on, and this week they will take to one of the world’s most prestigious stages: Carnegie Hall . Their journey to perform at the famed New York City concert venue has been long, painful and fraught with danger.
After the Taliban swept back into power in Afghanistan in August 2021 , many of the musicians believed they’d never play their instruments again. According to the group’s hard-line and austere interpretation of Islam, women should remain covered outside the home. Most forms music are strictly forbidden.
That’s what makes Wednesday’s Carnegie Hall concert such a triumph, Ahmad Sarmast, founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) , told NBC News in a series of interviews, the last in late July. It’s a “message of resilience, resistance, to the people of Afghanistan and the youth of Afghanistan,” he said. “In spite of all the challenges and the difficulties that they are going through and what they experienced in the last three years, they are still strong.
” ANIM, which the youth orchestra is part of, has long stood as a resounding symbol of resilience and resistance since it was established in 2010. Born under the fragile security of a United States-backed Afghan government in Kabul , it was the country’s first and only school of its kind. Boys and girls shared classrooms, Afghan.