No, John Legend. We are not doing this anymore.
What the new Afghan Star documentary podcast misses
When I first started the blog, I had my first few posts planned out: long form essays on texts and ideas I was excited about. But, unfortunately, my attention was averted. I am still working on those essays, but as a result of starting this Substack, I have become hyper aware of the harmful narratives about Afghanistan still being reproduced.
Last week, I saw an interview on the Daily Show with John Legend promoting his new podcast called Afghan Star produced by iHeartRadio and Kaleidoscope Media. Needless to say I was instantly skeptical and slightly annoyed that someone who has no connection or interest in Afghanistan was representing a documentary on such an Afghan cultural moment. As he continued to talk, my annoyance grew and turned into disappointment then anger.
I love John Legend. His first album moved me and I listened to the song “Ordinary People” on my red iPod nano on repeat when it came out. But the inauthenticity in the interview bled through profusely like an open bullet wound. While he is only hosting the podcast, the lack of knowledge and care about Afghanistan and its history of music was obvious and frightening. He reiterated the same binary: Taliban = bad, banned music; America = good, brings music in the form of American Idol. And while on the surface this might look true, if you ask any Afghan, they will have a more complicated answer.
The way the interview moved almost flippantly to the 2024 election and John Legend’s support of Joe Biden made my embarrassment for him almost overpower my anger. Again, if you ask any Afghan across the diaspora about Joe Biden, their answer will be complicated (with a few added expletives as well). The discordance between his promotion of a show that was supposed to highlight Afghan self expression, but at the same time negate it by not having an Afghan voice with him and promoting a politician that Afghans feel wronged by is jarring to say the least.
I already decided I wouldn’t listen to it, but then I remembered I now have a space to explore narratives and push back. Most Afghans wouldn’t listen to this type of content, but then again to give the producers of the podcast some credit, everything about the podcast, from the marketing, the trailer, promotion, and artwork screams pandering to a clueless western audience looking for a feel good story about America’s benevolence in the world.
From the outset, the first episode zooms into a specific date and time in a singular persons life- Dawood Sediqi, the person who is working tirelessly to get this new show on the air. Sediqi has moments where he is speaking directly and then John Legend's sweeping, ethereal voice takes over to frame the story and put things in context, acting as a mediator between the Afghan and Western audiences. Sediqi speaks a few lines in accented English and then suddenly Legend’s voice enters as if from above, watching below as it all unfolds.
Legend then takes over to get the audience on the same page using a series of comparison statements (that I find detestable) that try to get Western audiences to “imagine” how it would feel to be oppressed like the Afghans:
Because when the Taliban were in power the first time in the nineties, they did everything they could to rid the world of music. Clerics would tear out the innards of cassettes and string them up from trees. Morality police went around smashing radios and boomboxes with hammers. They conducted brutal raids on houses and terrified people into submission. Think about that for just one second. Think about all the songs you listen to today on your commute or bopping around the house, the music you heard in your car or hummed to yourself at the grocery store. Think about the soundtrack of your life, from the lullabies your mom sang, to road trips with friends, piano lessons to first dances. Try to picture all of that. Erased. Think about the absence of music. That's what happened in Afghanistan.
After hearing John Legend’s silky baritone voice read these lines out, I wished I could pause this and look in his eyes and just say “No, John. We are not doing this anymore. We are not reducing a whole people’s history and lived experience into a slice of their full, vibrant lives in order for it to be neatly packaged for people who don’t actually know or make an effort to know about the actual civilian death toll over the 20 year war/occupation/clusterfuck.” However, I couldn’t do that. So I had to just take the emotions whirring within me and swallow it, adding to the overflowing bucket of negative emotions and trauma that every Afghan holds.
What Legend misses is a whole history and context of this moment. Losing music is not all that “happened in Afghanistan.” They had also already lost their country, their loved ones, their homes, their sanity, their concept of safety. When the Taliban came, they brought brutality, yes, but they also brought an end to the incessant fighting of the Soviet War in the 80s and then the disastrous infighting between the American-created warlords following the Russians’ evacuation. So, yes, there was silence because of the absence of music, but that silence also held an absence of gunshots, rockets, and death. I am not making any political statement here, I am just stating context and facts. Music was not among the highest concerns of the people of Afghanistan. And Legend’s hyper-focus on this one slice of life only serves to further a narrative of a benevolent American empire.
Legend should also know that one cannot just erase music. Music lives on in people’s hearts and souls whether or not it is officially banished. Local stories in Afghanistan abound about how people still played and created music privately within their own homes.
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After doing this deep dive, I had a thought: Do we really need another Afghan Star documentary? Especially one that is so utterly devoid of complexity. After a quick Google search, I already came across two documentary feature films: Afghan Star (2009) a British documentary directed by Havana Marking, and And Still I Sing (2022) a Canadian documentary directed by Afghan Canadian Fazila Amiri. Interestingly, both of these documentaries are the directors’ first films and in the case of Havana Marking, it won her the Best Director and Audience Award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. Almost seems like Afghan Star is a crowd pleaser and a career establishing move that allows creators to break into their industry with an easily marketable topic that avoids any complex historical context.
When I think of an Afghan music documentary, I cannot help but think of the fact that Afghans still don’t have an Ahmad Zahir documentary or biopic. I watched the film Amar Singh Chamkila a few weeks ago, a biopic about a Punjabi folk singer, who was assassinated with his wife in 1988. It beautifully weaved the cultural, political, and social dynamics of 1980s India. And while I am sure it also lacked some nuance that Punjabis would attest to, I dreamed that there existed something like this for Ahmad Zahir. He was a voice of a generation who transformed into a haunting figure - his soulful sound follows Afghans into the differing regions of their multi-ethnic country and the myriad corners of the world where Afghans have had to start their lives over. Zahir was also killed/assassinated/murdered (whatever you believe) in a car crash on June 14, 1979.
By going into all of this, what I am essentially saying is that Afghans deserve documentaries, biopics, films, shows, and most importantly stories about Afghanistan created specifically for them. We don’t need or want another documentary about Afghan Star that caters to Western audiences. Our country and home has been ravaged, its land has been used to further America’s global ambitions and image-making, and its people have been depicted and reduced to caricatures without nuance or substance. It’s time to demand and advocate for our stories and viewpoints to be presented with all the complexity, vibrancy, and context it deserves.