The Enduring Melody of a Nation: Afghan Singer Naghma's Four-Decade Challenge to War and Tyranny

ERBIL (Kurdistan24) – In a suburban London wedding hall, under lights described as harsh, a singular figure swept onto the stage, igniting a wave of raw, unadulterated emotion that rippled through the gathered crowd. Naghma, the iconic Afghan singer, now in her seventh decade, was met not just with applause, but with an outpouring of love and reverence reserved for a national treasure.

For her fans, generations of Afghans scattered by the winds of war, she is more than a musician; she is, as reported in a powerful and intimate profile by The New York Times, "the embodiment of everything they hold dear: beauty, music and love for the homeland."

For over forty years, through communist coups, Soviet occupation, brutal civil war, American intervention, and the return of the Taliban, Naghma's voice has been a constant, a resonant and enduring melody that has chronicled the pain, longing, and indomitable spirit of her people.

Her persistence is in itself an act of defiance.

Since the Taliban seized control of Kabul in 2021 and once again outlawed music and relegated women to the shadows of the public sphere, Naghma can no longer sing in her native Afghanistan.

Yet, she continues to tour and record, her folk and contemporary songs echoing in concert halls and wedding venues across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, a testament to a spirit that refuses to be silenced.

Her journey, much like that of her nation, is a story of profound and almost unimaginable tragedy, a reality she acknowledged with quiet gravity backstage during her London concert this summer.

"My life story is truly tragic," she told The New York Times. "We were five brothers and three sisters. All of my brothers were killed serving in the army. One sister was killed in Kabul. Only one sister is still alive."

This deep personal pain, however, is belied by her public persona.

On stage, Naghma, who is now in her early 60s, is described as vivacious, with a ready laugh and a dazzling smile, a figure of strength and undaunted spirit. It is this resilience, this ability to transform personal and collective sorrow into art, that has cemented her place in the hearts of Afghans at home and in the vast global diaspora.

For many, in the wake of the ignominious collapse of the American-backed government four years ago, artists like Naghma have stepped into a void left by a discredited political class.

Her fans see her not just as an entertainer, but as a champion for the Afghan people, a role she has embraced by raising money for victims of a recent earthquake and, most courageously, by directly challenging the Taliban's draconian policies.

Her defiance is not a recent phenomenon. As early as 2013, when the Taliban were still an insurgent force fighting the U.S.-backed government, Naghma directly confronted their destructive ideology.

In a powerful and poignant video, she sang a cappella, a deliberate nod to the Taliban's ban on instrumental music, pleading with them to stop burning schools.

Her lyrics were a simple, heart-wrenching appeal: "Please don’t destroy my school, I need to be educated, I am an Afghan girl."

She has since recorded several more songs on the same theme and is preparing another, using her art as a powerful tool for advocacy. "I have a lot of messages for my people through my singing," she said.

Born Shah Pari in the southern city of Kandahar, Naghma was one of eight siblings from a mixed marriage; her father, a Persian-speaking doctor from north of Kabul, had married her Pashtun mother after being sent to work in the city.

Her love for poetry and song blossomed at an early age. Her father died when she was just a child, and she recalled being beaten by her mother for her persistence in pursuing music, a career that has always been a challenge for women in Afghanistan's deeply conservative culture.

Despite religious bans and a social stigma against professional singers, she persevered, writing her first poem at 13 and being selected at school to sing at national day ceremonies.

At 16, her life took a decisive turn when she moved to Kabul to live with her uncle and successfully auditioned at Radio Afghanistan, the nation's main hub of musical creativity.

It was there, in the late 1970s, that she was accepted into a stable of performers and poets, adopting the stage name Naghma, which means "melody."

She formed a famous and beloved duo with a fellow musician, Mangal, whom she would later marry. Their repertoire, she recalled, consisted of folk music and romantic songs. "In those days, everything was about love," she said.

But those days were fleeting. As war consumed Afghanistan following the 1978 communist coup and the subsequent Soviet occupation, music and musicians became instruments in the ideological struggle between secular leftists and religious conservatives.

Music flourished under the successive communist governments, but it came at a cost. Musicians were used for propaganda, playing at government events and for Afghan Army troops to bolster morale.

Naghma, as a member of the Interior Ministry's musical troupe in the early 1990s, became a direct target of the anti-communist mujahedeen, who had begun an assassination campaign against anyone connected to the government in Kabul.

The war came to her doorstep with brutal finality. In the early 1990s, her 17-year-old sister, Gulpari, was murdered in their family home, shot in the head through a pillow. Naghma is convinced the attack was meant for her.

"I believe they killed her because of me," she said. "They went to our home." In the immediate aftermath of this devastating loss, still mourning her sister, she was compelled by the government to record one of her most famous songs, "Beloved Pilot," while riding in the cockpit of an Afghan military helicopter.

The song was an ode to the Afghan airmen, a soaring tribute to the "Hawk of the blue sky, falcon of our mountains." But in the video, Naghma looked miserable, her grief palpable. "We were part of the Interior Ministry and we had to obey them," she explained. "If they told us to sing a song, we had to sing."

Soon after, she fled Kabul with her four children, beginning a new and difficult life as a refugee, moving between Dubai, Pakistan, and eventually settling in the United States.

She divorced Mangal and later married and separated from the son of a famous mujahedeen commander. She now lives with her surviving sister in Sacramento, California.

Throughout her years in exile, she never stopped singing, performing for refugee communities in Pakistan and around the world, her voice a constant connection to a homeland in turmoil. During the 20 years of the American intervention, she made several celebrated, albeit heavily secured, returns to Afghanistan, always a potential target for the Taliban.

Despite her immense popularity, Naghma is not without her critics. The very fact that she was part of the communist-era musical troupe has been used against her.

There is a widely believed but untrue legend that she was abducted by a warlord during the civil war, a story she addressed for the first time in her interview with The New York Times, saying it was spread to denigrate her.

Because she sings in both Dari and Pashto, the country's two main languages, she navigates a bitterly divided society, and while she is vastly more popular among Pashtuns, her cross-ethnic appeal is a testament to her national stature. Other musicians have at times accused her of being too soft on the Taliban or overly focused on the commercial aspects of her career.

Yet, her enduring appeal is undeniable. "I have been listening to her for more than 30 years," Nadia Noori, a fan who attended the London concert, told The New York Times.

"I love her poetry. She sings for the country and for women. She paved the way for many other young artists to come forward and she tolerated beatings and insults for her singing."

Today, from her home in exile, Naghma looks at the future of Afghanistan with a sense of hopelessness. She spoke of mentoring a friend's daughter in Afghanistan who, barred from school by the Taliban, has become depressed.

"With leaders like the current ones, how can I give women a message when I’m sitting here and over there the girls are not able to go to school and the women have no rights?" she asked.

But even in the face of this despair, her art remains an act of profound hope and connection. On stage in London, she appeared undaunted, tossing her lustrous black hair and blowing kisses to her adoring fans.

"I want to sing for you songs that will take you back to Afghanistan and give you love for one another," she told the gathering, before launching into a song that painted a picture of a homeland of breathtaking beauty and generosity, a land of high mountains, mulberries, and pine nuts.

For a few hours in a suburban wedding hall, thousands of miles from the mountains and valleys of their birth, Naghma's voice did just that, a timeless and powerful melody that, for a moment, brought them all back home.