Three years ago, nearly 300 young Afghan musicians, their teachers, and staff from their music school fled Afghanistan in fear for their lives after their country fell again to the Taliban. NPR followed them on their journey from Kabul to a new life. Since then, they’ve been permanently rebuilding their community as refugees in northern Portugal.
NPR visited them as they began to put down roots and recently caught up with them again, just before they tour the U.S. as the Afghan Youth Orchestra.
The Afghanistan National Institute of Music represented an exciting vision of Afghanistan. It brought together kids from all over the country, boys and girls alike, from vastly different socioeconomic circumstances, ethnicities, and language groups, says Ahmad Sarmast, the school’s director. He founded the school in 2010.
"I think one thing that connects us is not just our nationality or language or religion, but playing music," Sarmast observes. "Making music together also plays a significant role in keeping our identity as a community." That shared love of music is what binds them together.
"The group is very diverse, like Afghanistan itself," he says. "The community of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music is a mosaic, a smaller mosaic of the beautiful, diverse Afghanistan." The school quickly gained international prominence; its musicians even toured the U.
S. in 2013, including a performance at New York City's Carnegie Hall . It seemed like a new era was dawning.
But even.