Since arriving at the Longy School of Music two years ago, he's made it his mission to pursue social justice through his music. 'And actually 'fight' is a good word because that's how I feel about my instrument — I feel like I'm on the front line of a war against barbarity,' he said.
Pianist, composer and conductor Arson Fahim plays a piano at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.
In his homeland, making music could mean death. The Taliban banned it after taking power for the first time in the mid-1990s. “Sometimes they would kill musicians,” Fahim said, “or cut off their hands just for playing an instrument.” , a 27-year-old woman who was killed by a mob in 2015. “She was falsely accused of burning the Quran, and an angry crowd started beating her, they threw her off a building and drove a car over her,” the musician said. They also set her on fire, in the middle of Kabul, with hundreds of people watching.
Despite ongoing threats to his school, Fahim continued to study and compose music, and eventually conducted the orchestra. He went on to apply to Longy and received a full scholarship, but had to defer because of the pandemic. Then, as Fahim was getting ready to fly to America, U.S. forces were preparing to pull out of Afghanistan.But Fahim made it, just two weeks before Afghanistan fell, again, to the Taliban. Since arriving, the young musician has been sharing his mission at Longy.
"I want my music to be a way for me to fight for social justice, and actually 'fight' is a good word because that's how I feel about my instrument — I feel like I'm on the front line of a war against barbarity."“Broken Mountains” began as a piano piece with a melancholic, cinematic melody. “Kabul is just surrounded by mountains that are so beautiful, so grand,” Fahim explained. “And I could feel how hard it must have been for those mountains to suffer again and again.
“I was thinking about all of the things that happened in Afghanistan for me, for my family, for the music,” Khpalwak said from her new home in Virginia, “and about how hard it is for musicians not to play.”
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Colorado Supreme Court upholds controversial Google search warrant in deadly Green Valley Ranch arson caseThe Colorado Supreme Court on Monday upheld a controversial search warrant that Denver police used to identify the teenagers accused of killing five people in a house fire three years ago, while al…
Read more »
Google data ruled admissible in Green Valley Ranch arson caseFive members of the Diol family were killed in the house fire on Aug. 5, 2020.
Read more »
Colorado court upholds Google keyword search warrant which led to arrests in fatal arsonColorado’s highest court has upheld the search of Google users’ keyword history to identify suspects in a fatal arson fire. Critics have called the approach a digital dragnet that threatens to undermine people’s privacy and their constitutional protections.
Read more »
Colorado court upholds Google keyword search warrant which led to arson arrestsDissenting judge says such a wide-ranging search of a billion Google users’ search history without a particular target is exactly the kind of thing the Fourth Amendment was designed to stop
Read more »
Colorado court upholds Google keyword search warrant which led to arrests in fatal arsonColorado’s highest court has upheld the search of Google users’ keyword history to identify suspects in a fatal arson fire
Read more »
Arson suspected in Westlake apartment fire causing $100,000 in damagesThe Seattle Police Department (SPD) asked the arson bomb squad to investigate a Westlake apartment building that caught fire over the weekend.
Read more »