Afghani folk song, Afghanistan Watanem

[william.scherk]

I stumbled across a reference to this woman on CBC. She was born in Kabul, raised in Canada, got a job offer on Afghan private TV channel TV1, and is now 'Afghanistan's Oprah.' Also a charting singer in Afghanistan. Not beloved by Talibani-style folk, and about as sexy as apple pie, but still making her mark in the business and her favoured activities, encouraging female education, human rights and dialogue on taboos . . .

I liked this song for its weird almost-Appalachian, maritimey celtic hillbilly march feel. I am told it is a folk song and it has its hooks in me, but most will barf. Carol might join me in thinking it's an Irish Rovers song. For a glimpse of Mozhdah's work and projects besides Irish Rovers songs and packing a gun at all times, see this

on the Vancouver gal gone big . . . in the war zone.

[caroljane]

I stumbled across a reference to this woman on CBC. She was born in Kabul, raised in Canada, got a job offer on Afghan private TV channel TV1, and is now 'Afghanistan's Oprah.' Also a charting singer in Afghanistan. Not beloved by Talibani-style folk, and about as sexy as apple pie, but still making her mark in the business and her favoured activities, encouraging female education, human rights and dialogue on taboos . . .

I liked this song for its weird almost-Appalachian, maritimey celtic hillbilly march feel. I am told it is a folk song and it has its hooks in me, but most will barf. Carol might join me in thinking it's an Irish Rovers song. For a glimpse of Mozhdah's work and projects besides Irish Rovers songs and packing a gun at all times, see this

on the Vancouver gal gone big . . . in the war zone.

Thanks so much for this. From now on I will think not of Northumbrian or Highland or CapeBreton bagpipes, but of Indo-European pipes, period. They wailed the fall of Troy, they waded wailing onto Normandy, they accompany this gallant lady into battle.

Of the dumb deliberate cruelties of the Taliban, to starve people of music was the dumbest, because of course it is impossible to take music from a person without killing the person outright. Still, they did keep a large number of Afghans from listening to their music, or singing or playing it except under awful secrecy. One of my youngest students, Waheeda, heard hardly any music her whole life, until she was 21 and orphaned and a refugee. The first song she ever sang aloud, in company with others, happened to be "O Canada", because we always sing it at the end of every class. It tends to wake them up.

[william.scherk]

Of the dumb deliberate cruelties of the Taliban, to starve people of music was the dumbest, because of course it is impossible to take music from a person without killing the person outright. Still, they did keep a large number of Afghans from listening to their music, or singing or playing it except under awful secrecy. One of my youngest students, Waheeda, heard hardly any music her whole life, until she was 21 and orphaned and a refugee. The first song she ever sang aloud, in company with others, happened to be "O Canada", because we always sing it at the end of every class. It tends to wake them up.

If you ever get a chance to play this song by Mozhdah to your Afghani students, I would love to hear what they think the song means. Mozhdah's real work, she says, and one that protects her somewhat from criticism, is with girls in orphanages. One of her famous songs was dedicated to the victims of acid attacks -- girls whose sin was attending school, and whose punishment was disfigurement. I like that her message of freedom does not need to be articulated in so many words on her TV program: just broaching the subjects of forced marriages, child marriages, domestic abuse, child endangerment and child abuse -- this breaks new shocking ground in Afghani discourse. Her show attracts a huge audience, and extends the boundaries of taboo. I really am a supporter of this brave young woman . . .

Here is part one of a CNN feature on Mozhdah, with some behind the scenes glimpses of her life:

Edited May 25, 2011 by william.scherk

[william.scherk]

I stumbled across a reference to this woman on CBC. She was born in Kabul, raised in Canada, got a job offer on Afghan private TV channel TV1, and is now 'Afghanistan's Oprah.' Also a charting singer in Afghanistan. Not beloved by Talibani-style folk, and about as sexy as apple pie, but still making her mark in the business and her favoured activities, encouraging female education, human rights and dialogue on taboos . . .

I liked this song for its weird almost-Appalachian, maritimey celtic hillbilly march feel. I am told it is a folk song and it has its hooks in me, but most will barf. Carol might join me in thinking it's an Irish Rovers song. For a glimpse of Mozhdah's work and projects besides Irish Rovers songs and packing a gun at all times, see this

on the Vancouver gal gone big . . . in the war zone.

Thanks so much for this. From now on I will think not of Northumbrian or Highland or CapeBreton bagpipes, but of Indo-European pipes, period. They wailed the fall of Troy, they waded wailing onto Normandy, they accompany this gallant lady into battle.

Of the dumb deliberate cruelties of the Taliban, to starve people of music was the dumbest, because of course it is impossible to take music from a person without killing the person outright. Still, they did keep a large number of Afghans from listening to their music, or singing or playing it except under awful secrecy. One of my youngest students, Waheeda, heard hardly any music her whole life, until she was 21 and orphaned and a refugee. The first song she ever sang aloud, in company with others, happened to be "O Canada", because we always sing it at the end of every class. It tends to wake them up.

Okay, so since you are so dependable on translating the song's lyrics via your students (it's in Dari), I had the first verse and chorus transliterated. At least now you can sing along, Carol. And after it is burned into your brain, you can sing it to your students. You may not get to be a big star in TO, but you will be a big star to me.

Afghan Is Tan What Am

Afghan Is Tan What Am

Em Two-ee Show Cow

To Show Neigh (repeat)

Dearie

To Why What Tan

An Ass Tea

Moy Lou Toe Nee

Why Burr Man

High Go Low?

Kay Too Less

On Tea Go Low (repeat)

Edited May 16, 2012 by william.scherk

[BaalChatzaf]

I stumbled across a reference to this woman on CBC. She was born in Kabul, raised in Canada, got a job offer on Afghan private TV channel TV1, and is now 'Afghanistan's Oprah.' Also a charting singer in Afghanistan. Not beloved by Talibani-style folk, and about as sexy as apple pie, but still making her mark in the business and her favoured activities, encouraging female education, human rights and dialogue on taboos . . .

I liked this song for its weird almost-Appalachian, maritimey celtic hillbilly march feel. I am told it is a folk song and it has its hooks in me, but most will barf. Carol might join me in thinking it's an Irish Rovers song. For a glimpse of Mozhdah's work and projects besides Irish Rovers songs and packing a gun at all times, see this

on the Vancouver gal gone big . . . in the war zone.

This is an interesting Vid. I am able to see the Afghani folk as human beings, not Islamic cum Amalekite demons. I no long wish to nuke the lot of them, if it is avoidable to nuke them. I hope in the future they can keep on singing and clapping. And I would like to see them going back to the bushkazi (an Afghani version of capture the flag).

Ba'al Chatzaf

[william.scherk]

Bob, as a secular Jew, you know that your 'bloodline' runs all the way back to Cain and Abel and the first turtle, undiluted. The Afghans, however do not have the luxury of a single Afghan identity (ethnic/spiritual/historical). As the remaindered Jews of Eritrea (in Israel) are not quite like the Jews of Skokie, though and the Wigged Warrior Women of Ultra-Orthodox stripe are not Barbara Branden, there are Jews and there are Jews .... you know this, or you would not be allowed at Seder. One drop of non-Jewish blood and you would have been one of the final Samaritans, there on your last lonely hill in Israel, and not prospering under the civil rights regime in America.

Meanwhile, beyond the fog of our national stereotypes and beer-goggles, people.

The history of the peoples who headed for the hills of Afghanistan over millennia (usually escaping some looting marauder or reformer or pillager) is worth reading and considering, if only to keep the fog from condensing and killing.

If you, Bob, can hear the Celtic skirl in Mozhdah's marching song, it is for a reason. The Celts too pillaged and conquered and left blonde green-eyed ravishing beauties in the unlikeliest places (sort of like the last Jews of Cochin, but not really). Their fiendish non-racialist warrior culture settled as does rain into blood-drenched pastures, as Canadians settle the lands they conquered, blending and mixing their bloody histories. The Celts forged iron, dug tin, sold silver, hammered gold, pillaged, wed., farmed and wept, and if vanquished, interbred like crypto-Jews everywhere. Sort of like the lost Jews of Uganda, but not really. Sort of like the Cohenite strain of genetic diseases that plagues Yemeni semites, but not really.

Think Jews of Kurdistan. Jews of Djerba, Jews of Baghdad, Alawites of Ghajar (Israel-occupied Golan). Think how many of your cousins would die under nuclear justice.. The only ones to escape might be the Jews of Cape Breton.

Like the Jews of Ireland or other bog-people, who give up their defective, dreamy sons to the Church, the Terrorist Brown People wish to keep their own kids out of the army, the armed opposition, and the terrorist brigades. If necessary they will pretend to be Objectivists, even. Just think of the last Jewish Premier in Canada.

You should try to understand other Hill People, Bob. Like your preferred tribe of Hill People, they can be awful and they can be nasty and they can make shitty television and dominate all the Hollywood hills, but their mothers love them very much. All love hummus and pita and all quietly (or viciously) repress the Other if given half a chance. All remember a holocaust (be they Syriac, Yazidi, Alevi or Other) and wish to either avoid it or to pay it forward upon Them.

Repeat after me: Palestinians could be 'people' if they just renounced Terror. Until then, treat them like the British Mandate treated Irgun. Terrorists on the throne. Terror and oppression versus terror. Demanding of hunger strikers in Israeli prisons that they write a vow not to commit any more terror strikes inside detention facilities, obey the jailer, and wait for release from the Mandate. Or you will level their hills and push down their homes and fence them in.

++++++++++++++

Mozhdah packs a gun and gun permit, like any self-respecting Canadian Afghan, and can drop a deer in fog from 50 metres. She tends to mistake deer for intruders, but hey, who doesn't. She has a lot to learn and teach hill people, having been stewed in Canadianicity since the age of 6. We who are the hill people of the world, living together on a new plain.

I think a lot about bias and beer goggles and determined hill peoples lately, Bob,. it is encouraging that you now only want to nuke a portion of Them. Encouraging. As long as they dance and clap, they live.

Edited May 16, 2012 by william.scherk

[caroljane]

O, if you (and Bob) could only meet my Kabuli students, illiterate until yesterday, indomitable, women of deep joy and pain; and m,,y newest ones from N. Korea, equally new to freedom, equally open to life,, recently imprisoned by Dear Leader and by Imam Says, but INDIVIDUALS Baal, not will=less or blindly biased... just uninformed.... maybe less biased, compared to some more informed,,,,

[william.scherk]

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