His country restricted music. Suddenly he was a target.

When U.S. television audiences fell in love with the singing competition “American Idol” in the early 2000s, across the globe Afghans were equally — if not more — dazzled by its own version of the reality show. “Afghan Star” premiered in 2005, four years after the fall of a Taliban reign that had banned some forms of music.

Dawood Shah Pazhman, a singer, composer, and player of the traditional stringed instrument called the qeshqarche, earned acclaim for his performance in Season 9 of the show, which ended in 2021 when the Taliban regained power in Afghanistan. After years of playing music publicly, Pazhman went into hiding before fleeing his home country. For the past several months, he’s taken part in the Scholars at Risk program at Harvard.

“Music for me is very important,” he said. “It’s a part of culture. Every nation or ethnic community has something different, and music shows the different colors, and the beauty, and how they are rich.” 

Pazhman, originally from Badakhshan, a remote part of Afghanistan, described a childhood marked by government suppression and secrecy. 

In 2013, before a performance at an international music festival in Uzbekistan Pazhman told the Indonesian publication KBR that when he was a child he had been scolded by Mujahidin for attempting to sing with his father, another folk musician. The incident caused him to stop singing publicly for five years.

“In the opinion of the Taliban, doing music is not allowed according to sharia,” he told the Gazette. “I grew up with music … I fight all my life because they say music is against Islam.” 

After the Taliban fell in 2001, Pazhman was able to pursue music out in the open. The 2006 graduate of Kabul University with a degree in music has performed extensively throughout Afghanistan, and abroad. His first public performance was in 2011, at the Melodies of the East music festival in Samarqand, Uzbekistan. He said his band received the first position award among musicians from 54 countries.   

When he auditioned for “Afghan Star” in 2013, he traveled nearly 16 hours to Kabul.

The married father of four said that when the Taliban regained power, he and his family went into hiding for 11 months. “I could not go outside, not even to shop,” he said. Sometimes, he said, they couldn’t find enough food for their children.

Pazhman kept his music secret for nearly a year — wrapping his instruments in blankets when the family moved place to place. In a house in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, he said, “the Taliban started searching the house. When they found my instruments, they broke them.” 

Once he was able to escape, the family made their way to Germany for a year and a half. He joined Harvard’s music department in February. 

“It was so dangerous for me to just leave because I had lots of performances and TV programs where people know me,” he said. 

Fears for his own safety weren’t his sole motivation for fleeing. He also wants to make a better life for his daughters and wife. “The Taliban is there so the women don’t go to work. The girls also cannot attend school,” he said. His oldest daughter, who is 7, has started learning the violin since leaving Afghanistan. 

Pazhman is thinking about applying for his master’s degree in the U.S. after his time at Harvard finishes in January.  

“I’m just a person but I have a big responsibility on my shoulder to just show that Afghanistan is not terrorists or the Taliban killing people,” he said. “This is politics, but the people of Afghanistan, not all of them are thinking like this. There is culture there, and there is music. There is literature.” 

The Scholars at Risk Program is dedicated to helping scholars, artists, writers, and public intellectuals from around the world escape persecution and continue their work by providing academic fellowships at Harvard University. Founded in 2001 as an independent member of the International Scholars at Risk Network, SAR at Harvard relies on the generosity of private donors and the Office of the President to carry out its mission.