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Amazed by the Afghan Children’s Songbook Project

Today we celebrate the Afghan Children’s Songbook Project — a thing of true beauty.

In 1966 Louise Pascale, a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in Kabul, Afghanistan, worked with Afghan artists to make a children’s songbook to distribute to children around the city. In 2003 Louise returned to a war-torn Afghanistan to revitalize the songbook to help children find joy in singing songs across many Afghan ethnicities and cultures. The Afghan Children’s Songbook Project has since distributed fifty thousand copies of the songbook to schools and traveling libraries all over the country.

Spinning in Afghan Circles

The attan is a traditional Central Asian dance that crosses borders between the nations of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ethnic Pashtuns dance the celebratory attan by spinning for hours on end, clapping and waving red scarves to the beat of a two-headed barrel drum called the dohl. The challenge, and the joy, is to keep the good times going and going, and to always keep dancing.

Samir’s Tabla and Afghan Rabab


We start our week of Afghan musical adventures with a video featuring Samir Chatterjee, the very patient producer of All Around This World: South and Central Asia. Samir, who splits his time between India and the United States, has taught music around the world, including Afghanistan, where he helped revive musical traditions that decades of Taliban oppression had nearly destroyed. Here he shares the stage with Quraishi who plays the Afghan rubab. (sometimes “rabab.”)

The Awesomeness of Afghan Star

And now, Afghan Star….

Way back in 2002 when American Idol first hit the air and instantly became the biggest thing ever, aspiring star-makers around the world simultaneously screamed “AHA! Let’s make a billion dollars by having a pop sing-off here!” Hence the birth of Afghan Star — American Idol with a traditional Afghani twist. In the documentary, “Afghan Star” we meet a country thatwas celebrating its freedom after years of Taliban bans on music. For some contestants, especially for a woman who performs without her hijab in Afghanistan, it was a rocky road.

Baking Afghan Bread


Earlier this week we chanted “Daweedam,” otherwise known as “The Bread Story,” the tale of a young boy in Afghanistan who proudly bakes bread for his beloved teacher. You know bread is central to the diets of millions — billions — of people. In the West we don’t bake bread as much as we buy it, but some of us still find joy in the process. We go back to Afghanistan for this video, where we see the care they put into every loaf.