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Posts Tagged ‘afghanistan’

Bluegrass in Afghanistan

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2012| 3 Comments »

The bimonthly magazine called the Utne Reader likes to showcase alternative and contrarian views on the news. Here’s a sort of hands-across-the world story about taking bluegrass music to Afghanistan.

“My name is Peyton Tochterman. I’m a musician from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I make my living writing, teaching and performing American Folk music—the music that tells stories in notes, chords and verse about who we are and what we Americans are all about. And I’m now in war-torn Afghanistan. …

“In little more than a week we have already met thousands of Afghans and found them to be kind, generous, hospitable, talented and honorable. They take great pride in their heritage and culture, but they also have a thirst for American Folk Music, for the stories we tell, our instruments and the way we play. The Afghan musicians with whom we played are some of the best in the world and were eager to share their masterful techniques and songs.

“Some might ask, ‘What difference can a folk singer from the Blue Ridge Mountains make in a tortured place like Afghanistan?’ It’s a valid question—partly answered by one of the State Department officers who said our visit did ‘more for diplomacy between Afghanistan and the United States than any diplomat had done, more then any road that was built, or any power plant that was constructed in the last year.’ ” Read more.

Photograph of Peyton Tochterman: The Utne Reader

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Jason Elliot’s “Mirrors of the Unseen”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 9, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I finished Jason Elliot’s book about Iran, Mirrors of the Unseen. It was hard work but rewarding.

I bought the book because I really liked Elliot’s An Unexpected Light about the history, culture, and daily life of Afghanistan back when the mujahideen were still fighting the Soviets. (I’m reasonably sure that Tony Kushner’s prophetic play Homebody/Kabul was partially based on that book.)

Mirrors of the Unseen is a challenging read at times because it is very intellectual. It has lots of words and history and concepts that were new to me, but it also has wonderful stories about the ordinary people Elliot met. Even though he wrote it a few years before the the June 20, 2009, Green Revolution, you can get a sense of the attitudes of normal Iranians and what might have led to the unsuccessful revolt.

Elliot does not focus on politics, but rather on Persian art and architecture, which inspired him at a deep level.

I was reading a passage to my friend Claire on the train, and she said, “No wonder it has taken so long to read! It’s poetry!”

So for my last post on the book, I will give a few examples of Elliot’s style. He describes some English tourists as looking “very sad, and it seemed quite likely they had arrived in Iran by accident, like fish that are said to be swept up in hailstones and deposited hundreds of miles away.”

As he travels toward the southern part of Tehran toward the train station, “the surroundings grew steadily more decrepit, as if an old witch was being shed of her make-up.” And the train itself “had the air of a dragon straining at its leash.”

Here’s my favorite, from a discussion of whether the fascination that all religions seem to have with flame is passed from ancient cultures to modern or is something innate in humans: “Had the sanctity of flame erupted irresistibly into human consciousness as mysteriously as the hexagon into the intelligence of the bee?”

My other posts on the book are here, here, and here.

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