In Kabul I found plenty of evidence of music making. There was music on radio and television; cassette, CD and video shops played loud music on the streets; at night one could hear from afar the sounds of heavily amplified live music at outdoor wedding parties. Kabul's musicians were returning from their exile in Pakistan, and the Sufi lodge in Stonemason's Street, much frequented by musicians, was refurbished and open for spiritual concerts every Thursday evening. In certain parts of the city clusters of music ‘offices’ had sprung up, each the business premises of a group of musicians.

My involvement with issues of censorship started with the report commissioned by the Danish human rights organisation Free Muse in December 2000. At that time there was a complete ban on musical instruments and the sounds of instruments in those parts of Afghanistan under Taliban control. Today the New York organisation Human Rights Watch is monitoring the situation and, despite all the positive activity, there remains a heavy censorship of music in Afghanistan. Within Kabul itself there is a complete ban on women singing on radio and television, and on the stage. This ban has been the subject of intense argument within the radio and television organisations, which are under the control of the Ministry of Information and Culture. The justification for the ban on women singing is that to do otherwise would give the government's fundamentalist enemies an easy excuse to criticise the regime. In the case of television, a further reason given is that there are no competent women singers in Kabul at the moment, and the tapes in the video archive (dating mainly from the communist period) show women singers wearing clothes that today would be considered as too revealing. Obviously this argument does not apply to women singing on radio. There are though other radio stations available in Kabul, such as BBC World Service in Dari and Pashtu, Radio Azadi (Radio Liberty), and the Voice of America on which women can be heard singing.

If there is some censorship on music within Kabul, protected and patrolled by ISAF forces, then outside the city much stricter censorship is imposed by local fundamentalist commanders. Two incidents near Kabul were reported during my stay. In one, musicians from Kabul city were invited to play at a wedding in a village in the Shomali Plain. During the wedding, local police arrived to stop the festivities, and the host and two musicians were arrested and taken to the local police station where they were severely beaten. The next day the musicians were released and warned never to return. In another incident two musicians were killed when hand grenades were thrown at a wedding party in Paghman, near Kabul. It is not certain that the sole target for the attack was the music; it may have involved other disputes. But the dangers for musicians are clear enough, and few Kabuli musicians now venture outside the capital to play at weddings.

There is one area of music making that does not seem to have been as heavily censored by the Taliban as previously supposed. This is the singing and playing of the daireh (frame drum) by women in the context of women's wedding parties. Women, it seems, were permitted to use the drum provided they did so quietly, so that the sounds of their revelry could not be heard outside the house. I have commissioned further research on this important aspect of women's performance.