Ahmad Naser Sarmast

Ahmad Naser Sarmast is an Afghan-Australian ethnomusicologist. He is the founder and director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music.

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.^[1][2][3]

Sarmast graduated from an Afghan music school in 1981.^[4] He later left Afghanistan in the 1990s due to the ongoing Afghan civil war.^[1][2] Sarmast earned a master's degree in musicology in 1993 from Moscow State Conservatory.^[1][2] He was given asylum in Australia in 1994.^[1] In 2005, Sarmast became the first Afghan to earn a PhD in music, earning his PhD from Monash University.^[1][5][6]

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.^[1][7][3][8] Under the invitation of the Afghan Ministry of Education, Sarmast returned with a plan to restore Afghan music traditions that had been suppressed under years of Taliban rule.^[4][3][9] 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 and Western music.^[3][9] Sarmast returned to Afghanistan in 2008.^[2] He formally opened the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) in Kabul on June 20, 2010.^[3]

Sarmast originally planned to offer music education exclusively to underprivileged children, orphans and street kids.^[3][6] 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.^[3] The underprivileged children at ANIM receive a stipend of $30 per month to allow them to focus on school.^[3]

Sarmast also placed great importance on offering a co-educational learning environment, a rare situation in Afghanistan,^[10] listing that as his greatest achievement at the school.^[11]

In 2013, ANIM's Afghan Youth Orchestra toured the United States, including performances at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center.^[9][6] In 2015, the first Afghan female conductor, Negin Khpolwak, held her first concert with an all-female ensemble.^[12]

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.^[2][8] Following the attack, the Taliban released a statement accusing Sarmast of corrupting the youth of Afghanistan.^[2][8]

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.^[2][8] He was rushed to a hospital in Kabul for emergency surgery.^[8] 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.^[2][8] Sarmast stills suffers from PTSD as a result of the attack.^[2]

Further information

Sarmast spends time annotating Afghan music in Western notation to help record a mostly oral Afghan music tradition.^[2] He also hopes to rearrange Afghan music in the Western Classical tradition.^[6]

Sarmast has plans to build a concert hall and girl's dormitory at the current institute.^[2] Sarmast is also hoping to build music schools in other cities in Afghanistan, primarily Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad and Herat.^[3][4] He also dreams of eventually setting up a Symphony Orchestra of Afghanistan.^[6]

Sarmast was the subject of a 2012 documentary, Dr. Sarmast’s Music School, directed by Polly Watkins and Beth Frey.^[7][13]

Works

• A Survey of the History of Music in Afghanistan: Special Reference to Art Music from c. 1000 A.D. VDM Verlag. 2009. ISBN 978-3639131505. 

References

Bibliography