(#049) Woman, Singer, Afghan
Every week, a story from the world about how music can help us make sense of reality and how reality can help us make sense of music.
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They could be videos just like we see every day: short clips showing one or more women, sometimes at home sometimes outside, sometimes sitting sometimes standing, walking or dancing, all singing, occasionally slightly out of tune but always with great poise. It is a format that was arguably popularized by TikTok but that is by now one of the standard ways influencers use to grow their viewership and increase interactions on all popular social media platforms. Except the women in these videos are not influencers, they are not content creators, they certainly do not expect to make money out of their posts, and they often go to great lengths to make sure that their faces are not recognizable by viewers: some blur their face, some face the other way so that the camera does not include any of their distinctive features, some simply wear black masks covering their entire face. There are some reckless exceptions that proudly show their face but everyone, including them, knows what a risk they expose themselves to by doing so. Why? Because it is illegal for them to be women and to be singing at the same time. If they were caught, they could face prison time, flagging, stoning and in extreme circumstances death. Yet, they sing.
In late August, Afghanistan’s Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice issued a morality law that seeks to govern people’s public behavior. It contains a bit of everything, including some pretty grotesque norms. For instance, cassette tapes are banned, men who have not or cannot grow beards are barred from serving as soldiers, men cannot shave nor can they wear “Western clothes” such as ties, and people cannot be represented in any published or broadcast material. Yet, although most of the rules codified in the legislation apply to the population generally, there are many that specifically aim to restrict women.
As a result of the legislation, women may not leave the house unless it is urgent (and of course, the definition of urgent is at the discretion of the ministry), they may not venture outside without a male guardian, they may not look at a man in the eyes, and they must hide all parts of their bodies that could be “alluring” (again, a term whose meaning is at the discretion of the ministry, but essentially all of them). Yet, one of the most specific focuses of the new morality law is women’s voices, seen as “instruments of vice” and as such to be erased: no laughing, no speaking loudly (even at home, so that there is no risk that their voices are overheard by strangers), no speaking in public. And of course, no singing.
Resisting
The new morality law has sparked indignation both within the Western world and at the UN level; special envoys from various governements, human rights groups, NGOs and other groups have called on the law to be repleted. Yet, the main pushback came from Afghan women themselves: across the country, women began uploading videos online in which they completely defy the Taliban government’s systematic efforts to exclude them from the public sphere simply by singing. And it is not, of course, the act of singing alone (which would in itself be noteworthy). It is also what they sing and what they say before or after they sing.
A 23-year-old says «No command, system or man can close the mouth of an Afghan woman» at the end of a 39-second video that shows her singing outdoors lyrics that include “I am not that weak willow that trembles in every wind / I am from Afganistan.” In another video, a woman covered from head to toe in black sings “You have silenced my voice for now / You have imprisoned me for the crime of being a woman.” Hashtags like #MyVoiceIsNotForbidden and #NoToTaliban have accompanied hundreds of such videos both inside and outside Afghanistan that were shared on social media often through human rights groups and NGOs to ensure anonimity.
It is, of course, neither the first nor the last attempt that the Taliban government has put in place to restrict women’s rights since returning to power in 2021 after defeating Western-backed forces in various areas of the country and the US’s (rather messy) withdrawal from the country after more than 20 years. Since August 2021, the Taliban have blocked women from attending school beyond sixth grade, they have banned them from nearly all forms of paid employment, and they barred them from attending public parks and gyms. The crime of adultery, with the annexed practice of stoning to death, was reinstated early this year, and more generally it seems like the ultimate goal is to instate a “gender-based apartheid,” as UN officials have described it.
Yet, every new restriction is followed by concrete defiance by the subject restricted: when women were banned from being journalists, a small group of them founded Rukshama Media, an online news agency specifically covering issues that affect women in the country that operates in exile but relies on a small team of anonymous volunteers within the country. When women were banned from attending seconday school, a woman in Kabul transformed her house in a secret clandestine school in which about sixty girls aged between 13 and 18 study subjects ranging from math to literature. When women were banned from going to public parks and the gym - meaning they were effectively banned from doing sports - many of them started organizing itinerant workouts in areas that are far from Taliban checkpoints and hence unlikely to be discovered.
And now that they are banned from singing, it is to be expected that these protest videos are merely a step of a movement that is and will keep being prominent: talking to CBS news, Afghan woman Zuhal (not her real name) said «We will not surrender, because I have no hope for the future and I feel I will take all my dreams to the grave with me if I don't fight back». When you take everything from someone, they will have nothing to lose. Music is one of the channels Afghan women have found to voice their opposition. It is a universal channel that no piece of legislation can block.
I’ll be in your inbox next Sunday, with another story. Meanwhile, feel free to reach me with any comment or suggestion about this and future stories by emailing me at zeric.bojan@gmail.com or contacting me on Instagram at bojan.zer0.