Various Artists - "A Musical Anthology Of The Orient - (Afghanistan)" (Bärenreiter-Musicaphon) 1968

No i'm not turning into a Middle Class Bourgeois Prat! I'm a working class Plebeian Bourgeois Prat with too much spare time on his hands. Nor do I think I'm Peter Gabriel , who is 99% certain that he invented World Music single-handedly, seasoned with lashings of English public school Empire guilt. An empire run by persons that most Progressive Rockers' called their grand parents ......Phil Collins excluded of course.

There were rivals for the coveted crown of "white man gets funky with the munkey music",such as David Byrne, Eno, Jah Wobble and Can, of course,but most of them entertained at least some degree of humility....unlike the king of the 80's ethno-theft Mafia.....Paul Simon, who should be, quite frankly, shot at dawn by an AI assassination-bot,but only after draining Simon's mind of Data and deleting it, forever! This all dies with him.

The point is, that there was a thriving DIY culture going down long before the Buzzcocks and Desperate Bicycles, and what better way to illustrate this fact than to present a nice bourgeois coffee table compilation of Afghani Folk from ....well....Afghanistan......the only place on earth where it is currently Illegal to play, listen to or even think about Music.......basically Music is banned in Taliban controlled Afghanistan.

Maybe we could ask the Taliban to be special advisors on 'music' here in the smug as fuck West,so we can clamp down on the endlessly repeating shitstorm of Hip-Hop, and other aural terrorists blighting the grossly over-populated concentration camps of Spotify, Bandcamp, and that other one......one of the mullah's better idea's I volunteer. 

Just revive the Stasi and the DDR , in conjunction with the Taliban, to enforce harsh climate saving laws, and we may all stand a fighting chance for our grandchildren to witness the revival of the planet by the time the 22nd century comes about. We did it to Ourselves, we did......there you go...DIY again!?

Frankly 

There's too many Humans, too much choice, and too humans......am i repeating myself?...let 'em burn!

That said,This compilation was released in 1968 ,when Sophisticated Afghani's in Kabul,would have been digging The Move,and other paisley endowed Psych pop, clad ,ironically, in Afghan Coats.....which, I'm not sure were actually from Afghanistan at all?

Meanwhile,out in Hicksville, between the Bora Bora caves and the Desert,the ,allegedly,less-sophisticated local Tribesmen made their own music.It wasn't illegal back in '68. The large majority of it sounding not entirely unlike The Velvet Underground;just lacking Nico in a full face Burka.It was 1968 after all?

Ever wondered where Zoviet France got their Tape-Loops from? No, neither did I.....wankers.

Some of these tracks could even pass for an Unused backing track by eighties one-hit wonders Blancmange.....its that crazy......well, not That crazy, but you get what I mean.

The jolly chaps who play on this have probably long been murdered by US special Forces by now, or asphyxiated in the caves by one of George W.Bush's Daisycutter bunker buster missiles,killing everyone except Osama Bin Laden in the process......Bin Laden, being a Sophisticated Saudi citizen, who likely, at some point, tapped his sandals to a Psych-pop freakbeat tune or two when he went out to the Discotheque.

 

Tracklist:

A1 Song Of Kataran (Turkestan)
A2 Song Of Badarshan
A3 Melody For Flute From Turkestan
A4 Festive Music From Chardi (In The Region Of Kabul)
A5 Chant From Azarejot (Central Afghanistan)
A6 National Afghan Dance (Shah Mast)
A7 Chant From Farkhar
B1 Village Dance Melody Of The Region Of Kabul
B2 Pushtu Quatrain (Charbait)
B3 Ancient Chant Of Kabul
B4 Ancient Chant Of Khodaman
B5 Tumbur (Lute) - Solo
B6 Ghazni Chant
B7 Chorus From The Panshir
B8 Solo Of Sarinda
B9 The DOtar (Small Lute) Of Herat

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