Afghans are used to having their days broken by a burst of gunfire or the boom of an explosion. But the barrage of drumming, bass beats and amped up guitar solos that will hit the city next week may stop many in their tracks.
Sound Central, a one-day “stealth festival” that organisers hope will draw 1,000 to 2,000 young Afghans, will be the first music festival the country has seen since it plunged into three decades of violence in the late 1970s.
Afghan bands playing music from doom death metal to blues rock will be joined by musicians who have flown in from across Central Asia — Iran to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan.
The music will almost certainly be a new experience for most of the audience in a country, where people seeking a change from traditional Afghan music tend to listen to western pop or sound tracks from India’s big-hit Bollywood films.
“The real aim of this festival is to encourage youth’s interest in modern music,” said organiser Travis Beard, who dreamt up the festival four years ago, and has been working on it in earnest for the last two years.
“What we are trying to do is to expose them to new kinds of music so they can get into those styles of music, and also just start playing music. Hopefully, we’ll get some kids saying ‘Hey this is really cool! Dad can I get a drum set?’ or ‘Mum can I get a guitar’,” Beard said.
Beard is an Australian, who first came to Afghanistan as a news photographer five years ago, joined a band in Kabul, and rediscovered his love of music “after being away from home for many years.”
As he started meeting Afghan musicians, he got involved in supporting them — with instruments or a place to practice — and the festival was inspired by the community they formed.
With that in mind, he organised not only the day-long festival, but a week of workshops for Afghan musicians, and underground pre-festival concerts for all the bands to play more experimental music to a committed crowd.
They are also holding onto the amplifiers, graphic equalisers, drum kits and guitars that have been flown into Afghanistan for Sound Central, aiming to turn the festival into an yearly event and make it easier for children, who are interested in rock, to start playing the rest of the year.
“I live in Herat, which is an old city, and the people are too traditional,” said Masoud Hasan Zada, a full-time journalist and part-time lead singer of blues-rock band Morcha, or The Ants.
“There is too much tradition, including traditional music. It’s too hard to talk about modern music, especially blues ... it’s horrible sometimes,” he said. He spent a week in Kabul at the workshops, learning everything from online marketing to stage presence — something Beard says is particularly hard for musicians, who are talented, but grew up in a culture that frowns on exhibitionism.
“We are going to teach them how to actually rock out!” Beard said, with a grin at the start of the workshop, where more experienced performers thrashed on air guitars and jumped around a tiny stage, under the quizzical gaze of the students.
Meanwhile, in a country where music was banned under the austere Taliban regime, music stores are attacked in some cities, and some of the Afghan musicians playing have had to shut down their websites or even cut their hair because of social pressure, the festival is a daring venture.
Publicity for the event has been mostly word of mouth, and the date has been kept vague. Messages revealing the time and venue will go out to music fans only on the morning of the event.
“Its been termed the first ever stealth festival in the world. So like a stealth bomber ... we are coming in under the radar, dropping a lot of music on children, and then flying out. The promotional side of it is small,” Beard said. He has also recruited international support for the festival, hoping to show the world a different side of the country he has made his home.