The Guardian: ‘The Taliban tried to silence us’: the musicians who escaped to Portugal

ANIM’s story was shared in The Guardian ahead of the Afghan Youth Orchestra’s return to the United States in early August.

The Guardian:

A stone’s throw from Portugal’s oldest cathedral and buzzing bakeries serving up pastéis de nata, the complex notes of a sitar fill the ground floor of an unassuming building in the northern city of Braga.

The soft strumming belies the radical nature of the mission that has taken root here: to preserve Afghan music and use it as a tool to counter those who want to eradicate it.

“The Taliban tried to silence us,” said Ahmad Sarmast, the director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, in his new office in Braga. “But we’re much stronger and much louder than yesterday.”

Read the full article here.