Experts
on Afghan Music, Culture to Visit Five Colleges
Renowned
experts on music, culture and censorship in Afghanistan will
serve as scholars in residence at the five local colleges
this week, performing
a public concert, screening two of their films and visiting
college classes, hosted by the Five College Ethnomusicology
Committee.
John Baily (right) and Veronica Doubleday in concert. |
As musicians, filmmakers, authors
and ethnomusicologists, John Baily and Veronica Doubleday
have changed the way the world thinks about music and gender
in Afghanistan. They spent two and a half years in Afghanistan
in the 1970s conducting extensive ethnomusicological fieldwork;
Baily focusing on the public world of men’s music
and Doubleday on the very different world of women’s music
in the Muslim country.
Baily and Doubleday will perform
a concert at Smith of traditional music of Afghanistan on
Thursday, March 4, at 8 p.m. inm Sweeney Concert Hall, Sage.
They will be accompanied by Samir Chatterjee on the tabla.
The event is free and open to the public.
During the years of the Soviet
occupation and Taliban control of the country, the pair shifted
their focus to diasporic communities around the world. In
1985 Baily premiered his award-winning film Amir, documenting
the life of an Afghan musician living as a refugee in Pakistan.
Three years later Doubleday published Three
Women of Herat,
describing her relationship in pre-Soviet Afghanistan with
three Muslim mothers who shared with her the music, customs
and details of their everyday lives.
In 2002, after the fall
of the Taliban, Baily and Doubleday established the Afghanistan
Music Unit at Goldsmiths College in London and began returning
to Afghanistan, giving Doubleday an opportunity to catch
up with the subjects of her book and write an epilogue to
it. In 2003 Baily released A Kabul Music
Diary documenting
what was happening in the world of music there one year after
the defeat of the Taliban, and has since followed it with
two additional films exploring different aspects of Afghan
music in Afghanistan and around the world.
The duo's Five College visit
began on Sunday, Feb. 28, when Amherst College presented
Baily’s
film Amir: An Afghan Refugee Musician's
Life in Peshawar, Pakistan.
The events, all lfree and open
to the public, continue this week.
"Music and Censorship in Afghanistan,
1973-2003," a lecture by John Baily. Using
clips from his
documentaries shot in Afghanistan, Baily
will
discuss the Taliban's prohibition of live music
and
musical instruments and the cultural and
political implications
of this ban.
Baily and Doubleday will perform
a concert of Afghan music.
Screening of Baily’s
film A Kabul Music Diary. Conversation with the filmmaker
and reception follow.
These events are sponsored by
Five Colleges, Inc. and its member campuses.
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