“It’s resistance" — The Afghan Cassette Archive and ephemera under threat
The Taliban retook power in Afghanistan in 2021, after the hasty conclusion to a 20 year U.S. occupation. Since then, music has been officially banned in the country. Musicians are driven underground, instruments are destroyed, and recordings are contraband.Here in the East Bay, one Afghan-American is working hard to preserve what he can. He’s digitizing tapes he’s sourced from back home and posting them in an online database he started calling the Afghan Cassette Archive. But getting those tapes out of Afghanistan is not as simple as an online order… It's an illegal, expensive, and dangerous…
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