Burka Blues in Kabul

"My mother wears a burka,
I must wear a burka too.
We all wear a burka, we don't know who is who.
Blueee, burka blue."

- Burka Band
The first-ever Afghan girl band

"Blueee, burka blue" sings the lead singer on the tv, while another woman plays the drums and a third the guitar.

The three girls make small dancesteps and swing the microphone as you would in any other girl band. But there is one big difference. The three girls all wear the Afghan burka, the blue dress that covers a woman from head to toe.

25-year-old Nargiz is pictured here while making the video in Kabul , the capital of Afghanistan . She is one of the three girls who started the Burka Band two years ago.

Nargiz started the Burka Band when she met a German music producer in Kabul in late 2002. The producer was teaching Afghans to play modern music, and Nargiz learned to play the drums. One day she wondered why all the burkas in Kabul were blue, and together with two friends she wrote the song "Burka Blue", later recorded in Kabul with help from the German producers. The band would rehearse behind locked doors, so nobody would find out that the women were playing music. The burka also helped hide who the bandmembers really were.

In 2003, the German record label Ata Tak released the song in Germany and the song became a hit in German clubs after it had been remixed by a german DJ. The Burka Band even performed at a big concert in Köln during a trip to Germany .

The Burka Band has never performed in Afghanistan and at the moment the band is not active. During the Taliban regime music was totally forbidden, and women were not allowed to work. To sing in public could carry a death sentence. Today the country is still very conservative, and there is no market in Afghanistan for the Burka Band's music. The band members have to wait for a European or American record label to help them if they are to make a whole album one day.

Nargiz now works in an international organisation in Kabul ,

while the lead singer of the Burka Band has gone to Pakistan because she can't sing in Afghanistan , and the guitarist has a regular job.

Today the only place to see the Burka Band is on video, linked below. On the screen the first and only Afghan girl band plays on with their headphones on the burka-covered heads and the drumsticks swinging.