INTERVIEW: Elham Fanoos on his journey to find ‘The ‘Heart of Afghanistan’
Photo: The Heart of Afghanistan features famed singer Ahmad Fanoos, performing with his sons, Elham Fanoos (piano) and Mehran Fanoos (violin), plus family friend Hamid Habibzada (tabla). Photo courtesy of Kesten Migdal / Provided by Cindy Byram PR with permission.
Elham Fanoos and his family of musicians have traveled many miles to arrive at their United States concert debut, set for The Atlantic BKLN on Saturday, May 14. They call themselves The Heart of Afghanistan, and they offer a unifying bridge between traditional Afghanistan instrumentation and western classical music. The fusion is unique and respectful of the history of the art forms involved.
For Elham, this special concert will be a family and friend affair. Joining the 24-year-old on stage will be his younger brother Mehan Fanoos on violin, his father Ahmad Fanoos on vocals and his friend Hamid Habibzada on tabla. Elham will be sitting behind the piano.
“I’m really looking forward to it,” Elham said in a recent phone interview. “It’s going to be very exciting because it’s our first time playing together in public. … They should expect something very exciting and very unique and very new because this has never been done before as far as I know and as far as we know. The goal is to show unity and show that music is music at the end of the day. You can mix, and you can make something beautiful. It’s like ingredients and food. When you mix a bunch of them, if you use the right ingredients, you can make a really delicious dish, so that’s what we’re hoping for. It’s a fusion.”
Another goal of the concert is to put a “positive face” on Afghanistan, as Elham put it. The country has been written about a lot in the American press over the last 20 years, but often the stories are centered on war and terrorism. The Fanoos family is interested in sharing Afghan cultural traditions and their love of music with the crowd, perhaps recasting their expectations and breaking down barriers with some musical notes.
For Elham, his introduction to music came courtesy of his father, Ahmad, a legendary singer and TV star. “I grew up listening to him, but I didn’t necessarily learn from him,” the pianist said. “He didn’t teach me, but I guess I learned how to listen to music better.”
Because Elham and company are trying to bring a unifying message to their Brooklyn concert, they are hoping for a diverse crowd of music appreciators. For the pianist, there’s nothing more satisfying than looking out in the audience and seeing people from many different backgrounds. He called it a musician’s dream.
“That’s very exciting for sure, for all of us,” he said. “I think that’s the goal to reach different people from different backgrounds, different ethnicities, different countries. That’s very exciting. That’s one of the aspects of this performance and this band in general.”
Elham’s journey to the piano actually began with the tabla, a percussion instrument featuring two hand drums. He learned the tabla at 5 years old, but then his father encouraged him to consider a western classical instrument that was more “internationally known.” Perhaps the violin or the piano were the two suggestions. He eventually settled on the piano and almost instantly fell in love with the possibilities of the instrument.
“It looked really prestigious and sounded great,” Elham said. “It can do any job. It can be a percussion instrument. It can be a harmonic instrument. It can be a melodic instrument. It’s full range, high-low register, so that’s why I fell in love with it. I wanted to learn, and I told my dad that I wanted to learn piano. He also encouraged me.”
Elham grew up in Kabul, Afghanistan. He went to the local school and learned physics, mathematics and other traditional subjects, but he started to turn toward music and music instruction thanks to his father’s influence.
“I was listening to music all the time, but I wasn’t too much exposed to classical music until I went to the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, the only music school in Afghanistan and also the only school in Afghanistan that girls and boys can study together,” he said. “[In the early days], there was one piano for five students. We were basically standing in line to practice for 15-20 minutes, so that’s why I had to stay after school to practice for extra hours of practice, like three hours of practice. And I would go back in the evening, which was not super safe. It wasn’t extremely unsafe either at that time obviously because of the American military and other security forces.”
At that time in his life, convinced of the potential of the piano, he settled on his future professional dream: to become a world-renowned pianist. His music school then toured in the United States in 2013, and he had the chance to play on the legendary stages of Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He met several people on this trip, some of whom became his advocates and helped him out in the future.
But first …
“I went back to Afghanistan to finish my high school in 2014,” Elham said. “There was a suicide bomber in December at the French Cultural Institute. Some of my friends were playing and performing there, and there was a suicide bomber.”
He added: “The school was closed. I couldn’t have a piano at home either, so I couldn’t practice. I had to go to this hotel. … There are like 20 or 25 pianos in the entire country, and 15 to 20 of them were in my school. One of them was actually in this hotel, a very fancy hotel. I went there and played there because I wanted to practice.”
That practice has never really ended, and now Elham and his family will make a full-circle moment by bringing their heritage, their love of music and their mastery of many instruments, including the piano, to Brooklyn audiences.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Heart of Afghanistan will play The Atlantic BKLN Saturday, May 14 at 7:30 p.m. Click here for more information and tickets.
