Afghan girl band sings the Blues
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As you’d imagine, women in uptight Afghanistan aren’t really supposed to play music or sing songs. Much less are they supposed to compose kickin’ little songs about their head-to-toe covering called a burqa, which in Afghanistan are sky-blue. But 25-year-old Nargiz did that and got some friends to help. Behold the burqa-clad girl band doing their song: “Blue Burqas”
Gotta love those pluggers playing electric guitar with their hands covered in fabric.
At first I didn’t realize what was up with the shots where you’re behind some kind of mesh. Then I realized — duh — that’s them putting the camera behind the burqa to show you what life looks like when you’re wearing one.
I’m sure this video would be deemed scandalous to the conservative Afghan lot, but the song isn’t critical of the blue burqa or the fact that they have to wear it — it’s just treating it as a thing to talk about. I would think if I spent that much of my life in one, I’d compose little songs about it too.
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I am sitting in my kitchen in a little town in Virginia, just having watched the “burqa band.” There is something amazing about that. More than the distance geographically, I guess it is the pervansiveness of pop culture and that these ladies recorded and uploaded this to the web.
I followed up on the story a little bit on the internet. A German record producer went to Afghanistan a couple years ago to teach the natives how to play music — he’s the one that taught the drummer how to play (which I’m sure was forbidden). He helped produce the song and the video and took it back to Germany, where it’s been a bit of a hit in dance clubs. The reason the girls can get away with this is that no one in Afganistan knows who they are. Ironically enough, they have the burqas to thank for that. The article gives the first name of the lead singer as Nargiz, but that’s only her first name, and it may be an alias.
“This video is no longer available.”
Bummer.