Afghan youth take on corruption and war with heavy metal. band named D.U.

[ensho]

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/08/201181865222438469.html


Kabul Rock City


In November 2010, four 20-something Afghans took the stage at a private party in a Kabul French restaurant. As the young men walked on stage, their long black hair, leather jackets, hoodies, electric guitars, a bass, and a drum kit conspicuously took the place of the traditionally Afghan tabla, harmonium, and robab. This was Afghanistan's "first heavy metal band," D.U., who proceed to rip into a cover of shock-rocker Marilyn Manson's cover of the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)".

The shock rocker's disturbing and gritty take on a pop song built almost entirely on computers may seem to some as out of place in today's Afghanistan, but it is in fact a perfect continuation of Afghanistan's long legacy of music and poetry. From Rabia Balkhi's fabled odes, to her beloved writing on the walls of a hamam (bath) with the very blood gushing out of her jugular veins in the final moments of her life, to an iconic Afghan singer-songwriter singing about crushing defeats in a life full of "death and despair" in the 1970s, the rich history of poetry and music in Afghanistan has often veered onto darker paths than the devotionals to the beloved that have made Afghan-born Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi the world's best-selling poet.

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For D.U., the lyrics of Sweet Dreams describe the only Kabul they, along with their peers, have ever known. "It deals with reality. You are used and abused by other people as the poor are taken advantage of by the powerful and rich," said D.U.'s lead singer, who after on-going criticism by conservatives recently decided the band members must conceal their identities.

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"We can't sing about going to get coffee with your girlfriend because that isn't happening in Kabul right now," said the lead singer of D.U., who has an avid listener of heavy metal for 12 years now. For the members of D.U. and the members of The White Page, another rock band in Kabul, life in Afghanistan today is a paradox.

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wishing them well

[frylock]

1. \m/

[Kolesar]

2. Depleted uranium is very heavy ...eom

[ensho]

3. indeed it is

in more ways then one