Ahmad Naser Sarmast is an Afghan-Australian ethnomusicologist. He is the founder and director of the
Afghanistan National Institute of Music
The Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) is a school of music in Kabul, Afghanistan. It was founded in 2010 by the Afghan-Australian ethnomusicologist Dr. Ahmad Naser Sarmast, and offers a curriculum combining the tuition of both Afghan ...
.
Early life and education
As his father, Ustad Salim Sarmast, was a famous musician, composer and conductor in Afghanistan, Ahmad Sarmast grew up exposed to a wide variety of musical influences.
Sarmast graduated from an Afghan music school in 1981. He later left Afghanistan in the 1990s due to the ongoing
Afghan civil war.
Sarmast earned a master's degree in musicology in 1993 from Moscow State Conservatory.
He was given asylum in Australia in 1994.
In 2005, Sarmast became the first Afghan to earn a PhD in music, earning his PhD from Monash University.
Founding the Afghan National Institute of Music
Sarmast returned to Afghanistan to help revive music in his native country after the
defeat of the Taliban.
Under the invitation of the
Afghan Ministry of Education
The Afghan Ministry of Education ( fa, وزارت معارف افغانستان , links=no)( ps, د پوهني وزارت افغانستان , links=no) is responsible for policy formulation, the organization and supervision of education in Afgha ...
, Sarmast returned with a plan to restore Afghan music traditions that had been suppressed under years of
Taliban rule. In 2006, Sarmast had outlined his proposal in the Revival of Afghan Music (ROAM), wanting to open a dedicated music school with a curriculum combining both
Afghan
Afghan may refer to:
*Something of or related to Afghanistan, a country in Southern-Central Asia
*Afghans, people or citizens of Afghanistan, typically of any ethnicity
** Afghan (ethnonym), the historic term applied strictly to people of the Pas ...
and
Western music. Sarmast returned to Afghanistan in 2008. He formally opened the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul on June 20, 2010.
Sarmast originally planned to offer music education exclusively to underprivileged children, orphans and street kids. The Afghan Ministry of Education wanted him to open the school to talented students, so in the end an agreement was reached for a fifty-fifty split. The underprivileged children at ANIM receive a stipend of $30 per month to allow them to focus on school.
Sarmast also placed great importance on offering a co-educational learning environment, a rare situation in Afghanistan, listing that as his greatest achievement at the school.
In 2013, ANIM's
Afghan Youth Orchestra toured the United States, including performances at
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...
and the
Kennedy Center
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (formally known as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, and commonly referred to as the Kennedy Center) is the United States National Cultural Center, located on the Potom ...
. In 2015, the first Afghan female conductor, Negin Khpolwak, held her first concert with an all-female ensemble.
Victim of Taliban attack
Sarmast was injured in a suicide attack by the Taliban on the
Centre d'Enseignement Français en Afghanistan on Dec 11, 2014. Following the attack, the Taliban released a statement accusing Sarmast of corrupting the youth of Afghanistan.
Immediately after the attack, Sarmast lost consciousness and lost hearing in both ears, as both of his eardrums were perforated, resulting in him becoming completely deaf. He was rushed to a hospital in Kabul for emergency surgery. Later, he returned to Australia, where surgeons removed eleven pieces of shrapnel from the back of his head, restoring partial hearing to one of his ears. Sarmast stills suffers from
PTSD
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental and behavioral disorder that can develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence, or other threats on a ...
as a result of the attack.
Further information
Sarmast spends time annotating Afghan music in
Western notation to help record a mostly oral Afghan music tradition. He also hopes to rearrange Afghan music in the Western Classical tradition.
Sarmast has plans to build a concert hall and girl's dormitory at the current institute. Sarmast is also hoping to build music schools in other cities in Afghanistan, primarily Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad and Herat. He also dreams of eventually setting up a Symphony Orchestra of Afghanistan.
Sarmast was the subject of a 2012 documentary, ''Dr. Sarmast’s Music School'', directed by Polly Watkins and Beth Frey.
In 2018, Sarmast and the Afghan National Institute of Music were awarded the
Polar Music Prize
The Polar Music Prize is a Swedish international award founded in 1989 by Stig Anderson, best known as the manager of the Swedish band ABBA, with a donation to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. The award is annually given to one contemporary ...
.
The 2018 Polar Music Prize is awarded to the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) and Dr Ahmad Sarmast, its visionary founder and director, in recognition of how this inspirational organization has used the power of music to transform young people’s lives.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Sarmast, Ahmad Naser
Australian musicologists
Ethnomusicologists
Living people
Monash University alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
Afghan emigrants to Australia
Australian emigrants to Afghanistan
Asia Game Changer Award winners