Thursday 12 November 2009

21. Bakht Zamina

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I don't know much about Bakht Zamina, but she was clearly a fantastically beautiful and talented Afghan singer, as this video on YouTube illustrates:

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Note that she never smiles, and that she always moves back - away from the microphone - when she isn't singing... Perhaps there were limits to what one could show (i.e. what women could do) even on Afghan Communist television? Also, I think that the way she rolls her eyeballs when saying "vai, vai, vai" is brilliant!
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However, besides daring to "westernize" (i.e. appear on television without a veil, sing, &c., which no doubt made her many enemies in ultra-conservative Afghanistan), she apparently collaborated with the Afghan Communists, as this other video illustrates:
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Here is the studio version, perhaps more explicitly pro-Communist:
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A Chitrali friend in London once told me that she lived in constant fear of being made to pay for her songs, and that - one day - her inevitable destiny caught up with her...
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1 comment:

  1. To understand who she was you need to know where she came from. She lived and died the same way that most women in her profession died, the only differene that becuase of her performence in TV she left behind a foot print. What is the most tragic is that she lived and died similar to her lyrics that she was so soulfully perfromed. She dided of complication from TB aggrivated by long work hours and continuous beating from her husband who also happen to be her pimp.

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