Afghanistan National Institute of Music founding director to receive honorary Juilliard doctorate
Florence Lockheart
Friday, May 13, 2022
The entire Afghanistan National Institute of Music were recently airlifted out of Kabul and have settled in Lisbon
The Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) has announced that its founding director, Dr Ahmad Naser Sarmast, will this month receive an honorary doctorate New York’s Juilliard School of Music and Dance.
The honorary doctorate will be awarded at Juilliard’s 117th commencement ceremony, alongside honours for dancer-choreographer Masazumi Chaya, bass-baritone Simon Estes, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and composer-conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, who recently retired from his role asartistic director of the New World Symphony
Dr Sarmast said: ‘It’s a great honor to receive this distinction from such an important institution as the Juilliard School of Music and Dance. I hope it will help focus international attention on ANIM’s efforts to ensure the future of Afghanistan’s rich but beleaguered musical heritage, and on the plight of those still living there, whose musical, educational and gender rights are currently being denied.’
After being airlifted out of Taliban-occupied Kabul to Lisbon, the school’s more than 120 students, along with faculty, staff and family members were granted asylum and invited to rebuild and continue to pursue their mission of transforming the lives of disadvantaged children, educating boys and girls together, and helping them realize their artistic dreams.
Founded by Dr Sarmast in 2010, ANIM is Afghanistan’s first and only music school, giving Afghan children an opportunity to receive a general education and study Western and Afghan music in a mixed gender environment. In 2018 the school won a Polar Music Prize for its use of ‘the power of music to transform young people’s lives’.
The Taliban occupation threatened girls’ education and the practice of music itself, the ANIM community escaped with the all-female Zohra Orchestra to Qatar, then Lisbon, arriving in December 2021. The entire ANIM student body has been integrated into Lisbon’s Escola Artística de Música do Conservatório Nacional where, since February, they have continued their studies.
Dr Sarmast has been invited to speak at the 2022 World Justice Forum in The Hague. He said: ‘Any human being, regardless of age, has the right to access music and express themselves freely through music. But unfortunately, the people of Afghanistan are being deprived of these rights. Once again, they have been turned forcibly to silence.’
You can find out more about ANIM here.
