by Ayesha binte Rashid

Shamali Afghan carries with him the story of two generations, three countries, and many decades. This heritage is traced back to Afghanistan, to Shamali’s grandfather, who was a music enthusiast and trader, often traveling between Afghanistan and Pakistan. On one such trip, he brought back with him a harmonium — Shamali’s father, Shah Wali Afghan, was fascinated by the instrument but, a young boy at the time, was forbidden from touching it.

A 9-year-old Shah Wali contented himself by drawing make believe harmoniums on rocks and singing along to them. He was overheard one day and was offered to perform for a local radio channel and, soon, Shah Wali became a child sensation. By adulthood, Shah Wali was a recognised voice in Afghanistan with a forte in classical and folk music.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and war broke out in the country, leaving wounds that survived long after it ended. After the Soviets retreated, a freshly scarred country saw the rise of a new government in power, a government that abhorred music and issued its prohibition across the cultural framework of the country. A target was set on Shah Wali who, being a singer, was seen as being wayward and not a welcome inclusion in the newly-restructured country. Forced to leave his family behind, Shah Wali walked to the border and crossed into Pakistan — his wife and children did not hear from him once he had left home.

Shamali’s mother decided to follow her husband to Pakistan and, with two young children by her side, traveled to Torkham by foot. In Peshawar, mother and children settled, for a time, in a refugee camp. By this time, Shamali’s mother presumed the worst — with no word from her husband, she thought he had been murdered and believed herself a widow, alone in the world with two children. One day, while playing outside, Shamali’s brother, her eldest child, was approached by a man dressed in Afghani clothes, wrapped in a shawl — it was Shah Wali. “It was like my soul had returned to my body,” Shamali’s mother still tells her children.

In Pakistan, Shah Wali’s life had begun to progress past the trauma of his experiences in Afghanistan. His career had begun to flourish as did his musical learning when he was taken under the tutelage of Ustad Nawab Ali Khan. In the company of Mehdi Hassan Khan, Ghulam Ali and Farida Khanum, Shah Wali developed his passion and talent for classical music and came to be known as one of Pakistan’s most renowned Pashto singers.

Shamali came into the world on February 3^rd, 1993 in Kagawala, a village in Peshawar, the youngest of 12 children. Due to his father’s then established musical career, Shamali had access to instruments like thetabla and the harmonium from a very early age. His brother had an ustad who would come teach, and Shamali would sometimes join along, his talent being apparent at a young age. Music, however, was of little interest to Shamali — a mischievous child, Shamali recalls spending most of his time getting up to prankish antics.

As Shah Wali continued to gain recognition, he increasingly spent more and more time away from his family, his travels taking him to Germany, Norway, Sweden, and eventually to Canada where he was able to gain residency. The conditions of his resident status meant that he was unable to return to Peshawar and so, once again, was separated from his family – this time for twelve years.

Shamali was only a child when his father left and as he grew older memories of his father became faint. He would see his father on television and was fascinated by his voice — yet the man on the screen remained a stranger to him. The years of separation were difficult for Shamali and his siblings. “Your mother is like a pot who contains you, your father is the lid. That lid was missing,” says Shamali. Other village children would tease Shamali, telling him that his father was in prison or had left his family and married abroad, establishing a new family and life. To Shamali’s young impressionable mind, these stories were easy to believe.

When the family finally moved to Canada in 2003 and Shamali met his father, it felt like he was meeting a celebrity. Shah Wali was much older than Shamali remembered and, at first, it appeared there was a lack of connection. But the love that comes with family and blood had never gone away, and rose quickly to the surface and did away with the weight of distance and time.

The first year in Canada was a trying experience for the family as Shamali and his siblings found themselves having to learn a new language and adjust to a way of life that was alien to them. School was nothing like the schools they had grown accustomed to in Peshawar and, as fresh immigrants, the children were not like other children in their school, becoming easy targets for bullies. Unaware of what a Canadian winter had in store for them, the family struggled against the immense cold without the necessary clothing to keep themselves warm.

It was in this foreign land, that the teenage Shamali discovered poetry. He fell in love with it, finding that his favorite poets seemed to know exactly how to put his feelings into words. The wordsmiths he loved best were Pashto and Urdu poets from our part of the world like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Khyber Afridi. “When I would read poetry, it would feel like just yesterday I encountered an experience that a poet is speaking about today,” Shamali says, “It was a strange feeling. It made me fall in love with poetry.”

This love for poetry proved a gateway to classical music — when expressed musically, Shamali found that the verses he loved took on magical dimensions. He developed a taste for classical music by the masters his father had spent time with and, in their music, he found a medicine for the trials of daily life “Life’s circumstances made a pathway into music and poetry. When I would listen to music, my heart would find peace. Music would give me rest.”

As he entered his twenties, Shamali finally gave himself over to the artform that his father had entrusted his own heart to so many decades ago. Shamali was now the pupil of Shah Wali Afghan. The training, however, was entirely on Shamali’s terms and at his pace — Shah Wali imparted his teachings to his son in the exact doses that Shamali wanted. As Shamali’s love for the craft grew, so did his talent and drive to pursue the musical field professionally. Over the last ten years, Shamali’s career has grown with appearances on television shows, performances in multiple concerts and self-funded music videos.

Today, Shamali’s Facebook page showcases videos of songs sung in Pashto, music videos in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and live sessions sung on Afghani television shows. Waiting for his rehearsal at Coke Studio, Shamali talks about his father – telling a story that spans four decades and three continents, of a man who loved music enough to risk his life for it. “I think about him wherever I go,” Shamali says, “I think about how much he must have missed his family.” Shamali too now pursues his own musical calling in his father’s footsteps. Listening to him talk about music, you know that his love for the artform equals his father’s: “Music is an energy. Music is alive and it chooses you. Anything I went through in life, music would become the solution. And so music became a part of me. I am Music and Music is me”