Sitar player Huma Rahimi participates in Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop in Boston.
In Sunday’s (8/27) Boston Globe (login may be required), A.Z. Madonna writes, “On a carpeted classroom floor at New England Conservatory earlier this month, Huma Rahimi, 25, sat with her legs crossed and a sitar in her lap. A sitar, not her sitar … [Her] sitar was half a world away, hidden somewhere in Afghanistan … She had entrusted the instrument to him after the Taliban seized control of the country in August 2021, and banned all music. Some musicians were able to smuggle instruments out of the country, she said, but the sitar is [too] large and distinctively shaped … So here she was, at Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshop, learning unfamiliar music on an unfamiliar instrument—but she was playing music again, and that mattered as much as anything. The annual Global Musician Workshop unites musicians working in many traditions from around the world…. Rahimi arrived in the United States in June with assistance from Silkroad’s newly established Refugee Fellowship, which coalesced with guidance from Harvard University’s Scholars at Risk program in response to the situation in Afghanistan…. ‘Bringing at-risk musicians to the United States was something the organization felt very strongly about,” said Ben Hartley, Silkroad’s new executive director as of mid-May.”
