BALTIMORE -- The melody was played on turquoise ukuleles, with children beating out the rhythm on miniature drums. “I feel peace when my family is safe,” sang the youngsters and their mothers, who are ...

The Taliban announced in August that it had destroyed over 20,000 musical instruments in Afghanistan in the past year. The extremist group considers instruments un-Islamic and permits only ...

Wood shavings littered the floor of Sakhi's cramped workshop in the Afghan city of Herat as another rubab, the national musical instrument of his homeland, took shape under his deft hands. Sakhi has ...

KABUL, August 15 (UNHCR) - His songs evoke the harsh beauty of his native Afghanistan, a country he fled more than 12 years ago, but they were composed in a green and tidy suburb of Toronto, Canada, ...

Music in Afghanistan is perhaps best known, particularly in the West, for falling silent under the Taliban. But since 2001, musicians within and outside the country have taken steps to revive ...

The Taliban have intensified their cultural crackdown in eastern Afghanistan after authorities confirmed the public ...

The melody was played on turquoise ukuleles, with children beating out the rhythm on miniature drums. “I feel peace when my family is safe,” sang the youngsters and their mothers, who are refugees ...

But that heritage is threatened in Afghanistan under the Taliban authorities' near-total ban on music, considered corrupting in their strict interpretation of Islamic law. Since coming to power in ...