06.06 How Afghans Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Rock & Roll
KABUL, June 6 (Alexey Eremenko, RIA Novosti) The show by Afghan alt rockers Kabul Dreams kicked off and wrapped like a school band performance: A teacher welcomed the trio onstage at the auditorium of Kabuls Lycee Esteqlal and gave them flowers afterward, as some 200 spectators cheered in their seats.
But in-between, the band sounded perfectly grown-up, with enough crunchy guitar, solid hooks and strobe lights to have the audience whistling and howling like veteran rock fans anywhere between Berlin and San Francisco and head-banging by the stage during the April shows encore.
Kabul Dreams are often called the first rock band in Afghanistan about the last country associated with a thriving rock scene. And though they werent the first, they are undisputed trailblazers for the local Western-style music scene, which has come a long way since the ouster of the anti-music Taliban regime in 2001, and is doggedly carving a niche for itself next to thriving homegrown pop stars.
Though Afghan bands are still miles away from packing stadiums, the prerequisites for a burgeoning rock scene are falling into place: The countrys population is young, rapidly urbanizing and keen on modern communications and media, which have improved vastly over the past decade.
Theres an audience and there is a market for this kind of music, Omar Sharifi, head of the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies in Kabul, told RIA Novosti in a recent interview.
