The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 40

15.11.01 3 PHOTOGRAPH-PETER DEJONG 'When music was banned, people lost part of thsir identity' a music store reopens in the Afghan city of Kandahar part of their identity and were constantly being reminded that they were leading an abnormal life. For example, you can't have a proper Afghan wedding without music. The playing of music is now telling people that normality has returned." No sooner had the Taliban left Kabul than the city resounded to the beat and keening melodies of Indian and Iranian songs, together with the long-hidden favourites of the Afghan popular canon. Music-kiosk merchants whipped out their bootlegged cassettes and pushed aside the only kind of music the Taliban allowed: unaccompanied male voice choirs singing dirges. From restaurants bright with multi-coloured fluorescent lights, from balconies, from the brazenly wound-down windows of taxis, the music pounded again.

aily offers a valuable corrective to the "praise be to Allah, we can now play Bryan Adams" view i Songs of freedom Afghan refugees In Pakistan kept their traditions alive during Taliban rule The banned played on OA of liberation. Despite the 1 surprising popularity of .1... CA .1 mi; iiiui i iLcimi. in mi; country, Celine Dion has the outskirts of the Pakistani border town music, but Sufis use it widely as part of their religious rituals," says Baily. It was banned in Iran immediately afterthe revolution, but by the mid-SOs was back in favour and is now-stronger than ever.

It is tightly controlled in Syria, is now coming under attack in Pakistan, but enjoys surprising freedom in Saudi Arabia. "In Afghanistan, the assault on music started in the refugee camps in the 1980s," says Baily. "There were many people who had lost family members in the war against the Soviet Union, and music was deemed inappropriate." That was also a major factor in the ban on instrumental music in Iran: the country was fighting a war in which more than a million Iranians died. The contrast with the west is stark: seeing transcendence in music, we build it into funeral rites (witness Remembrance Day and the time-honoured sequence of haunting tunes); Muslims associate instrumental music with pleasure and consider sacred chants to be the only appropriate memorial. The Taliban took this to an extreme, evidently trying to create a society in perpetual mourning.

"The Taliban claimed in 1998 that the prophet had said that those who listened to music in this world would, on the day of judgment, have molten lead poured into their ears," says Baily. "But this is not an authentic tradition, nor is it supported by anything in the Koran. The Taliban just made it up." Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, says that though the Koran does notoffcrauthority for the banning of music, there is a saying attributed to the prophet in which he opposed stringed instruments and music that was "Traditionally, scholars have interpreted that to mean that stringed instruments were forbidden," he says. "In practice, it hasn't always been observed music has played a major part in many Islamic societies. The Taliban, because they took a very puritanical line, adopted a more rigorous approach to the banningof musical instruments." Where does that leave British Muslims? "Our path is always the middle way, as the prophet decreed" says Bunglawala.

"We accept music but would frown on disco-going, or concerts where alcohol is served or where there is unrestricted mixing of the sexes. That would be opposed by even in Britain, where a distinct form of Islam is being forged, Muslims remain suspicious of music -and of its associations with pleasure, drink, sex and transcendence. It is tempting to see this as a uniquely blinkered view, but that would be to ignore a similarly puritanical streak in Christian thought. The belief that "the devil has all the best tunes" did not begin with Islam; the phrase is usually attributed to the English preacher Rowland Hill, though the great missionary and organist Albert Schweitzer traced it back to Martin Luther. "We need one instrument," wrote St Clement of Alexandria, "the peaceful word of adoration, not harps or drums or pipes or trumpets." St Augustine disliked music and thought only of the animals that were killed to make the skins of drums and thestrings of harps.

In the middle ages, organ music "the devil's bagpipe" was widely opposed and many organs destroyed. The killjoys of the Taliban have many forebears in the west as well as the cast. Additional reporting by James Meek in Kabul. Research on early Christian attitudes to music by Marwonne Gretlier of Peshawar there's a I run-down concrete block, decorated on the CO) outside with posters promoting the names of its publicity-seeking not yet replaced the great heroes of Afghan music Ahmad Zahir, Ustad Sarahang, Ustad Mohammed Omar, Farhad Darya, Saadiq Fitrat. The first item broadcast on Radio Afghanistan when it fell to opposition forces on Tuesday was a song by Darya, currently in exile in the US but now planning to return.

Similarly, when American planes bombarded Afghans with music last week, their carefully chosen weapons were the love songs of Fitrat. "My music is about love and life and romance," explains Fitrat, who has been exiled in London since 1991. "People can dance to it, but no one is allowed to under the Taliban. They say that a man should think only about God and the day of judgment and always pray. But I have read every word of the Koran and cannot find a single sentence that says music is bad." The date Fitrat went into exile is, however, significant, and another revisionist point emphasised by Baily.

Suppression of music did natbegin under the Taliban: the warlords who had fought the Soviet army had started the censorship. As Baily points out, amplified music was banned in Herat long before the Taliban took control. "The process hardened under the Taliban, but they didn't start That suppression was never complete, however. There were many stories of Afghans who would listen to music on cassettes in their cars, then hastily switch to aTaliban-approved tape as they approached a checkpoint. Moreover, according to Baily, even those so-called dirges were not entirely free of traditional musical content.

The Taliban songs use musical modes which arc the same as in other types of Afghan music," he says. Or as a critic once said of the music of Wagner, it's better than it sounds. What it wasn't was accompanied. The Taliban opposed instrumental music, but in doing so they were in tune with a strain of Islam that has existed since the religion's birth. The controversy over music has been going on within Islam for the past 1,300 years," says Baily.

There is nothing in the Koran against music; indeed there arc traditions that the prophet Mohammed accepted music in certain situations, for example at weddings. But there has also always been a puritanical eicment within Islam." The religion is hopelessly split on the issue. "The Wahabi sect takes a strong line against glass in our shop-fronts as they go past. And the police aren't always to be trusted. Some of them taunt us.

And the religious scholars from the madrassas holy schools complain that our music is un-Islamic and threaten to break our instruments, the only source of our income." I am shown a smashed tumbor, and told that one of the "scholars" was responsible. There should, of course, be no restrictions on the Afghan musicians of Peshawar. Butlife here is difficult, at times dangerous for them, for Peshawar is still astrong Taliban-supporting town: most inhabitants are Pashtun, from the same tribe as the Taliban. There is now a clash of Islamic ideas within Pakistan, and music is one of the battlegrounds. In the west there is a creeping Talibanisation and disapproval of popular music.

In the east, in the Punjab and around the easy-going, academic centre of Lahore, there's a more liberal tradition that gave rise to Qnwwali, the glorious ecstatic music of the Sufi mystics for which Pakistan is renowned. The city was home to the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, the finest Qawwali singer of recent years, best known in the west for his experimental adventures with the likes of Massive Attack. It is home, too, for his nephews, who are members of the rousing Rizwan Muazzam Qawwali, which toured Britain during the summer. The dividing line between the two cultures runs roughly between thecapiuil of Islamabad and the bustling twin city of Rawalpindi. In their Afghan quarters the music shops are busy.

But here, too, there is a growing uncase. I attended a cheerful wedding party of Afghan exiles in Islamabad, at which there was aband playing, and some of the women even took off their veils as they joined in the dancing. But the groom suddenly decided that the television team with me must leave. Supporters of the Taliban might get to sec what had been going on. Public anxiety has increased as the air strikes continue, and the Northern Alliance is seen as no friend to either the Pashtun or Pakistan.

If there is a backlash, it could be cultural as well as political that broken tumbor in the house of the Peshawar musicians could be a sign of trouble to come. yet somewhat-nervous residents. They are all refugees from Afghanistan musicians who were forced to flee because they were banned by the Taliban from playing their music. Non-religious music was deemed un-Islamic. Those found performingcould expect to be jailed and have theirinstrumcnt1! smashed.

Some 200 professional musicians working in more than 20 bands are based around the dusty Khalil complex, with its maze of balconies and little offices where the musicians rehearse and tout for business. Some local stars are here, including the singer Sultan Hama-hang, who once performed acrossNorth America and Europe. Others arc young bands trying to make a living by playing for the exiled Afghan community. There are some 3m Afghan refugees in Pakistan, many living near Peshawar, and those who have money and want musicians for weddings or parties come here to hire players. There is constant music in the building: the sound of traditional Afghan instruments such as the rubab, the local answer to the guitar, or the tumbor, which is more like an Indian sitar.

There is percussion, provided either by furious hand-clapping or by labia drummers sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of their instruments. Saxophones and clarinets add a western touch. It's a wildly cheerful sound, but this is not a cheerful community. The musicians complain at the tough life they lead and how little they earn. And when I mention the state of the war in Afghanistan, they ask not to be quoted by name, and explain why they are so worried.

The Taliban may be on the run in Afghanistan, and music can he heard once again in Kabul, but along these border regions their ideas live on. "When there are anti-American demonstrations," I am told, "the crowds break the.