Posted on 09/22/2013 11:02:16 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Fifty years ago this week, Duke Ellington and his band played in a concert he later called one of the most memorable of his life. The performance was in Kabul, in Afghanistan, and even though Ellington was at the height of his fame, almost all traces of it have been lost.
For the organiser, Faiz Khairzada, and hundreds of Afghans in the audience, the concert was a high point of the early 1960s. "It was very exciting for me to have him in Kabul," says Khairzada, then head of Afghanistan's cultural affairs organisation.
It was he who met Ellington at the airport and drove him on a golden afternoon across Kabul, then a small city, to the stage he'd built at the Ghazi stadium. Khairzada was a jazz fan and they chatted on the way about Louis Armstrong and about plans to make home-grown Afghan films. "You make the movie, kid - and I'll do the music for it," Ellington offered, and in the Kabul of 1963, all that seemed possible.
Tickets were free and around 5,000 people made their way to the stadium to hear what to them was the new and strange sound of jazz. Ellington opened with Caravan, followed by Don't Get Around Much Anymore. Khairzada remembers that between numbers Ellington would come to the edge of the stage and chat to the audience.
"Of course the people didn't understand. This kind of music - blues and jazz - was very little known," he says. "But they loved the style. When the trumpets and saxophones came out and did their solos, people were awed - not so much by the sound, but the performance."
Ellington was puzzled when, halfway through the concert, the audience appeared to leave. But Khairzada explained that it was the hour of prayer,
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Kinda like this ?
In Performance at the White House | B.B. King “The Thrill is Gone”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLh-8HkvmyM
Or this?
Regina Spektor - “Us” (live at the White House)
Must Watch !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc7y4PCyREo
Sad to say that Afghanistan was better off when the Soviets occupied it.
Those pictures are long before the Soviet invasion in 1979.
I know, but even so.....even Russian occupation beats what they have now.
The death of Modernity is being accepted and advanced by the PC.
A fight for the right to be stupid.
A fight for the rights of a quaint and backward culture of abuse for the sake of remaining non-judgmental.
The left has boxed themselves into a hopeless outcome.
They love free expression at home and hate intervention abroad.
After all, these women should be free to be abused as they are.
Who are we to say it is wrong.
How sad. I believe we have our version DETROIT and of course coming to a city near you.
Back in the day, one of my jobs in a brand-new organization was to fill slots in embassies in southwest and central Asian embassies and Kabul was one of them. I’d never been there, but I’d read “Caravans” by James Michener, and therefore I was the office expert. I’d served TDY in Teheran during the Shah’s reign and thought that was just about the end of civilization. Over the years and prior to our invasion, Kabul was a relatively good place to live.
Well, I found the hotel, it’s still there, the pool looks empty. The hotel has a website too, sounds pretty nice. Anyone want to join me?
I went to the Intecontinental regularly during my half-decade in Kabul after 9/11. Normally I’d go for the breakfast buffet Saturday morning and then hang out by the pool to read or study. I’d also go for walks in the nearby hillsides. They had decent security although one Novemeber the dining room windows were blown out by rockets. Note that they are no longer affiliated with the chain of the same name.
You beat me to it. Amazing what could have been, before the radicals took over. Crying shame.
I was there ‘02-’03. People ask me what it was like. I tell them think of the Flinstones...more violent....lots of homosexuality and pedophilia...and illiterate uneducated masses.
They usually regret asking.
If you go to the areas of Afghanistan that had heavy Russian influences, ie Herat, you’ll see some of their bloodlines in the folks.
They did some horrible, horrible things to the Afghans. But, they were at war and fought it the way they did. However, if you go to the cities that they occupied, there is/was some semblance of modern life.
Then....the Taliban moved in and revved up the opium machine so they could live the good life while the people starved and regressed into the stone ages.
Thanks nickcarraway. Luckily he didn’t perform “One O’Clock Jump” during that hour of prayer.
The Russians tried to conquer Afghanistan, failed miserably, and left it a smoking ruin, featuring among other things children maimed by explosive fake toys courtesy of the Red Army.
Then Islamists came.
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