The 8th edition of the Haizebegi Festival will take place in Bayonne from October 7 to 17, 2021. With concerts, films, discussions, symposia, workshops, and master classes, Haizebegi uses music as a tool for resilience.
Hasam is the son of a shepherd. High in the mountains of Afghanistan, his father passed down to him the tradition of the tambur, a long-necked, two-stringed lute that has been found in Central Asia and Iran since at least the 10th century. When he plays, Hasam multiplies the strings, twists them, and makes them resonate deep within each of us. Hasam grew up to the sound of the tambur and his songs. He tells the master what happened. It was eight years ago.
Hasam visited his father in the mountains.
On the way back, he races down the slope, tambur slung over his shoulder, and boards the bus. A few kilometers further on, the Taliban stopped the bus, searched it, and found the instrument. “Whose is it?” Silence. “Who plays music?” Silence. Furious, they destroyed the instrument, then singled out two passengers: Hasam and the bus driver. And they struck finger after finger, breaking the distal phalanges and the fingernails.
Hasam fled southwest, traveled up through Iran, entered Turkey, made his way down toward the Mediterranean, reached Athens, and found himself, at a loss, in Victoria Square, until the time came for bureaucratic procedures and providing evidence. Then came asylum.
It is now the summer of 2021.
In Cologne, Hasam meets the grand master of Afghan music, Daud Khan Sadozai, a disciple of Ustad Mohammad Omar, “the Sultan of the Rubab.” Hasam is impressed: “I am in the presence of a legend.” Daud Khan Sadozai smiles. They talk about Kabul, the neighborhoods, life there, and that great family of instrument makers: 400 years of craftsmanship. That’s where they both bought their instruments. Hasam can’t believe it. He points to his deformed fingers and explains that he’s limited. The master tells him to turn this into a resource for creating his own art.
Daud Khan Sadozai arrived in Europe in 1996, shortly before the Taliban blew up the Buddhas of Bamiyan—three monumental statues carved into a cliff face in the Bamiyan Valley, 2,500 meters above sea level north of Kabul. That was in 2001. It is here that artist Pascal Convert set up his studio to create, on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the destruction of the giant Buddhas, this *Panoramic View of the Bamiyan Cliff*, acquired by the National Center for Visual Arts (2020) and exhibited at both the Galerie du Temps at the Louvre-Lens (2021–2024) and at the Guimet Museum (2018–2022). P. Convert has graciously agreed to join us and will present his film *Les Enfants de Bâmiyân*. We would like to thank him here for donating the photograph to Haizebegi that serves as the poster image for this edition.
On August 25, Zabihullah Mujahid, Taliban spokesperson and chairman of the Afghan Cultural Commission, explained to The New York Times why music schools were closed and music stores destroyed:
“Music is forbidden in Islam, but we hope to convince Afghans not to do these things, rather than forcing them.” ”
And so, because of this unbelievable distortion of texts and history—in defiance of the most sublime traditions and the infinite richness of Islam’s musical heritage—it is today in exile, in Cologne, that Afghanistan’s centuries-old musical traditions are being passed down. And in Bayonne.
Shamshad, too, was forced onto the road to exile, alone with her children. At the CADA in Bayonne, she applied for asylum. You’ll hear her on October 8 and 13 in the film TRACES 1 – AZTARNAK 1, in a song from the highlands of Afghanistan alongside Sulaiman (Chad), who chants, and Yousif ( Sudan), who implores for peace. TRACES is a program of new works that Haizebegi is launching with the support of the DRAC Nouvelle Aquitaine: TRACES, representing what each person leaves behind to move forward in life. TRACES 2 will then be performed as the festival’s closing event on this day, which—together with the Euskal Barrockensemble, the residents of the Cité Breuer, and Brian Currin—we are dedicating to the 10th anniversary of the Aiete Conference, which symbolizes the desire for peace in the Basque Country. Can art be a tool for reconciliation?
Among the wide variety of artistic offerings in this edition, you can attend the Rap Day on October 15, the Malagasy concertby Erick Manana & Jenny Fuhr, the technologically sophisticated production of *Walking Down the Street*, featuring Lina Rahal in breathtaking hip-hop dance solos, and the Indonesian show *Kraton* by Lutfi Jakfar, Kadek Puspasari, and Ronnie Lynn Patterson.
But above all, the MusiKautisme event will give you the chance to meet Hélène Nicolas, known as Babouillec, who has been diagnosed as having an “80% disability.” Babouillec never learned to read, write, or speak. Yet, using cardboard letters, she composed her eponymous *Algorythme*, which premiered at the Avignon Festival in 2015. “I am Babouillec, openly declared to be speechless. Alone, locked away in the systemic alcove—the subterranean nurturer of the weariness of silence—I broke through the silent barriers, and my brain decoded your symbolic language: writing.”
And to mark the 10th anniversary of the Aiete Conference, the medieval music of the Euskal Barrockensemble (Enrike Solinis) will fill the Cité des Arts.
They will be joined by Colombian percussionists from the students of Collège Camus, residents of the Cité Breuer, Mohamed and Abdellah Boujalal —who appeared on *The Voice*—and Tony Le Guilly’s breakdancers. Together, they will celebrate the figure of Subh, the Basque slave who ruled Al-Andalus. Music is an instrument of resilience.
The Haizebegi team wishes you many wonderful encounters.
Denis Laborde,
Artistic Director, Haizebegi Festival
The 2021 edition of Haizebegi is organized in collaboration with the Franco-German University (Saarbrücken) and the “Anthropology of Emotion” Fall School hosted by the ARI Institute and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.
