Comedians and Afghan weddings

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1:14This is The Fifth Floor, at the heart of global storytelling with BBC journalists from all around the world. I'm your host, Farnak Amidi.

1:30Weddings in Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan, used to be majestic celebrations. Women would wear traditional, colorful clothes and lots of jewelry. There would be rose petals spread on the floors, the most elaborate banquets. And most importantly, the sound of the rabob and tabla drums would be everywhere.

1:56But in 2021, the Taliban took control of the country and banned music. These days, wedding parties across the country tend to be much quieter affairs. But people have refused to let the music ban dampen the celebrations. And in some cases, music has given way to a variety of other art forms. BBC Pashto's Payanda Sargant has recently attended a Kandahari wedding and joins me right now in the studio. Payanda, welcome to the fifth floor. Thank you. How did you end up in a Kandahari wedding? Yeah, I was on deployment in Kandahar and one of my friends, he told me that there is a wedding. Would you like to go?

2:39I said, well, there is no music, nothing. What's the point? He said, no, there is a lot of entertainment and stuff that you would love. So I was going to work on a story about cultural shift anyway. So I said, well, this is the best opportunity to go to this wedding and see this cultural shift, which really amazed me. When you want to go to a wedding in Afghanistan, do you need official invitation or is more of a community affair? Like you hear there is a wedding down the road and everybody goes. Kind of. Yeah, you will be invited. nowadays people send the card in whatsapp but most of the times i mean you will invite 300 people but 600 will shoot everyone will grab his friend his child or brother or someone and take it did you used to just uh crash weddings when you lived in afghanistan well sometimes if we heard that the music is very nice we did that and they're the wedding crasher yeah just have some Neat, nice clothes.

3:44No one will ask you where you are going. So paint a picture of what a typical Kandahari wedding used to be like before the Taliban took power. It used to be full of music, dancing and everything. Food is very important. Qabili is the most famous. Qabili Palau. Qabili Palau. Yeah, rice with raisins and carrots and meat. in the cities it will be in a big wedding hall and they are majestic, so shiny, beautiful with high ceilings and lights and stuff. But in the villages it will be in a nice garden somewhere in a big compound and people will dance, sing songs. So a lot of people will wait for a wedding and really get prepared.

4:35It's the event of the year. Yes, it is. Yes, yeah, yeah. And Payende, what about music? What was the role of music in wedding celebrations? And just tell me, what kind of like music do they play? Do they bring live bands or is it just recorded music? Live band, yeah, it has always been like that. So live music, if you can afford to invite a famous singer, the bitter. It's different when we talk about villages because in the villages, women would mostly just have their own music. Like they will sing, they themselves will play Daria, which is just a drum type thing, or maybe play tape recorders.

5:15And then they will dance the Afghan traditional dance, Atan. They will perform that in a circle. The first person will go ahead and the rest will follow him, his moves, which are, of course, in correlation with the drum, the way the beat works. so yeah that's how it was and sometimes we even had for women we had little children who would be allowed to go and sing and play music for women boys yeah boys and just for our listeners who might not know it's because parties and wedding parties especially they're mostly gender segregated in Afghanistan and in Iran I know that now they have DJs playing in...

6:03You have DJs as well. Well, yes. I asked a few women and girls, they're even happier with the DJ because, let's say, if you have live music and you tell them to play a song so you can dance, they may not be able to play the way you want it. Yeah. Whereas DJ, you have your own song, the one that you really practiced for and with the same beats everything. And people do practice their moves before going to a wedding. They really try their best to shine in the party and be the best dancer in the party. I love it, Bayanda. You're originally from? Well, I grew up in Kabul all my life. So you grew up in Kabul.

6:44Yeah, when I was a kid, this was back in 1980s, the weddings, I remember, were mixed. Women, men, all together. We sat around the table in families. is a mix of Afghan culture and sort of wedding culture in the West. So we have a cake, we have syrup or drinks that the groom and bride share, so music, white dress and things. And then, of course, the Afghan tradition, which is added to that, like they will put a big sort of cloth on top of bride and groom so they can look at each other under that in a mirror. So they will take the mirror underneath it and they look at each other there. Or they will put henna on their hands, what we call nakrizi or khina.

7:37And what happens is that the groom will go to the bride's house. He will receive her there. From there, they will come to the wedding hall. You did a video for BBC Pashto. Can you just describe to our listeners what the wedding hall looked like and what is going on in that video? When I was invited to this wedding, what I did was I followed this journey going from the groom's house all the way to the bride's house, then back to wedding hall. And honking the horns. Yeah, and then they played music inside the car. I mean, while moving, the chorus moving, of course, unless it stopped. But not too loud.

8:23Yeah.

8:28So then we went to the bride's house, and there they had this nikah, the vows. Yeah. And then in Kandahari tradition, a bride would make clothes herself, tailor clothes for her husband. with shoes and everything from head to feet. And he needs to wear those clothes in front of everyone. So that's what happened. And we went to the wedding hall and the wedding hall was massive. There was hundreds of people. Food was served, amazing food. And then the arts started. Tell me about the entertainment. So there is no music, but what kind of entertainment was there? The most interesting bit was the stand-up comedy.

9:13So there are comedians who will come to the stage and they will change their voice and just make people laugh. Was it funny? It was funny. It was funny, especially the way they put the argument between a man and his wife.

9:38So husband-wife jokes. Husband and wife jokes and stuff. Family friendly. Yeah, very family friendly because there were kids in the wedding hall as well. They wouldn't go to politics that much, but there was also poetry. So in the poets, they touched a little bit the political issues too, like they asked for education and they talked about the value of education, especially for women. So these professionals, you know, stand-up comedians, back in the day in the 80s in Iran when you went to weddings, because it was also gender segregated and there was no music. There was a lot of magicians as well.

10:15They came in with magic and party tricks. So I can imagine like these professions in Kandahar must be very happy. They're getting a lot of gigs maybe before they didn't. Yeah, before they didn't. I mean, when the music was allowed, the whole party was music. I mean, filled with music from beginning to the end. But now they really need to fill this gap. and if there is stand-up comedy, poetry, singing without music, people have a chance. They have a platform. To show their talent. To show their talent. Whatever you have, come and present it.

11:01That's how it works now because some of these people, they were singers before. They were people who used to sing. and now they just come to the parties still sing without music which no one can criticize There's a little girl in your video, she's visually impaired tell me about her and what she's saying to the guests That was a sad moment in that wedding hall She had a poem, one or two poems and this poem was more about education, the love towards the country, her mother and also the value of education and she was asking for education. The point was that she loves books and talking about her disappointment, that I am so disappointed, but all, of course, in the poem.

11:53The whole hall, all people were just quite listening to her. I mean, she shut all the noise in the hall. Everyone was just listening.

12:14Do you see this kind of alternative entertainment all over the country, or is it unique to Kandahar? Not only Kandahar. In some places, like even in northern Afghanistan, now they play games. They do buskashi game, which is riding a horse. It's not very common, but now if this ban on music lasts longer, I'm sure there will be lots of other art forms and entertainment. People need to do something. If there is an occasion, you need to enjoy it. And what do you think this says about the importance of art in Afghan culture, in your opinion? Because in Afghanistan, so many of these kind of bans have existed for so many years in the first round of the Taliban rule and now.

13:10But it has never died. No, it doesn't. And the thing is that Afghanistan has a rich culture and it's very old and it has been there for thousands of years. And now in 21st century, especially with computers, with mobile phones, with AI, it's quite difficult to stop music. But there are other art forms that are now growing and people are trying to learn those or practice those. At the moment, there are lots of women who do handicraft, who needlework. It grew a lot. I know girls who paint and do calligraphy now. So all other forms, art forms that were not very common, let's say, in the recent years are now...

13:59Flourishing. Yes. In my piece, I also mentioned that art will change color, will change place, will change shape, but never disappears. You can't make it disappear. You can't. It's impossible to make it disappear. Payande Sargand from BBC Pashto. You are listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

14:50I don't want you to miss about the real history behind the Odyssey. With a major new Hollywood adaptation arriving this month, we'll trace Odysseus' epic journey across the Mediterranean, uncover the world of Mycenaean Greece, and investigate the mysteries of Homer and what draws us back to this timeless masterpiece again and again. For everything you need to know about the Odyssey, check out Dan Snow's history hit wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Farina Kamidi and this is The Fifth Floor. Now let's head to Nigeria where another wedding tradition's been banned. The tradition of money spraying is a major part of Nigerian wedding celebrations.

15:32But now you could face a hefty fine or even a prison sentence if you're caught doing it. What exactly is money spraying and how is it viewed by the general public in Nigeria? Mansour Abubakar from BBC Africa Online tells us more. Many people cannot imagine a Nigerian wedding without money spraying. It's something that has been happening for decades. It's a tradition. It's part of the culture. People find it very, very exciting and something they always look forward to when it comes to Nigerian weddings. How it happens is the celebrants themselves, the groom and the bride, their families, friends, come with a bunch of cash in their pockets.

16:14And when the music is playing, everybody is dancing, they start bringing out these monies from their pockets and their bags and start throwing it in the air. The words of cash flying in the air. I spoke to a professor of history in Bayro University in Kano. His name is Professor Tidjani Usmananya. He said it began in the 1930s when the economy was going into a positive note. It first started with the celebrant sitting down, the groom and bride. So people come with the cash and they give it to them, just maybe while they sit down and the music is playing. The music in the 1930s was slower, but in the 60s, the dancing and the music has evolved more fast.

16:54It's more quick, and so people were more energetic. And, you know, Nigeria got its independence in the 60s. So a lot of celebrations during that time, and that's from where the money spraying really took off. And since then, it's something that people have continued doing.

17:11So the ban has been in place for over a decade. It's the Central Bank of Nigeria, which controls the monetary aspects of the country, monetary policies, and it's in charge of the Naira. It kind of felt that the Naira, which is a national symbol, has been disrespected. When you throw it in the air, it hits the floor while people are dancing and stepping on it. So for the CBN, it felt it needed to step in. For them, it's a kind of abuse. It's a country symbol, one of the biggest symbols in the country, the national currency. And it felt people are disrespecting it.

17:47The law stopping the Naira Spraying has been in place for over a decade. But it wasn't really enforced until in the last two years. That's when the enforcement started, and we've seen some people jailed for doing that. So Amus Krab is a popular makeup artist in northern Nigeria. He lives in the city of Kanu. What happened was that during his wedding, as is the tradition, a lot of his friends came trying to help him enjoy the day, came with their cash. They were throwing it in the air, stepping on them. He also joined the phone. He was one of those doing it. So he was the one that was arrested, and he was taken to court and given the maximum sentence of six months.

18:26What surprised many people is that he wasn't given an optional fine. He was given a six-month prison sentence and he's currently serving that jail time. For many people, just because they want to stay on the right side of the law, they've decided to do away with the tradition, even though they do enjoy it. They enjoy money spraying at weddings and celebrations and all of that. So they've decided to bring out a new method. So what they do is instead of throwing the money in the air, a big bowl is presented at the events. And what you do as you are dancing, you bring out the money from your pocket or your bag, then you just put it inside, just using your hand to place it inside there, just like a donation box or something as you dance.

19:07So it took away the fun of the spraying and all of that. But at the same time, for many people, it's staying on the right side of the law and avoiding anything that will put you at the risk of arrest. There is a correlation between the economy and the ban. Even before the ban, the economy, as we all know, the economy of Nigeria is not doing very well at the moment. So there are people that have decided to kind of reduce the level at which they do money spraying, they spray money at events, just because they need money for something else. But at the same time, for some people, it's something they can't do without.

19:39Even if it is their last money, they prefer to go to a wedding and enjoy themselves. I've been to several weddings over the years and I know how important it is for a lot of people. There are events where awards are given for someone who's paid the most money. So it's something that I've seen a lot of people enjoy come home after events and they talk about it as if it's just like after watching a football game and the striker scores an incredible goal. I spoke to some ordinary people who told me that the government have much better things to think about instead of concerning themselves with how I throw my money.

20:17It's my money and I can throw it in the air and enjoy myself. So for them, it's not a necessity. It's definitely troubling that the government is doing this at all. Mansour Aboubakar from Bipsi Africa Online. How long does a wedding ceremony last in your culture? A few hours? A day? A couple of days? Well, for some Tuareg communities living in North Africa, a wedding is not a wedding if it doesn't last for seven days. The BBC Arabic's Extra TV team was invited to one of these celebrations and Saif Jibai can tell us more. So for this week's story, we travel all the way to the south of Libya in the town of Al-Ghat.

21:07This town is in the middle of the desert. It's very hot, where the temperature reaches around like 45 degrees on average. We get to know Jamal Bisa.

21:22Jamal is a young man who is from the Tuareg. The Tuareg live in parts of North African countries and parts of Central African countries. They lived there for thousands and thousands of years, and they continued till this day to protect and hold the traditions that they had for a long, long time. Our story revolves around the marriage ceremony that Jamal is going to have, where we try and discover how the economic situation in the country impacted these young people that are trying to get married, and how are these traditions impacted by the rise of cost of living and the economic crisis in Libya in general.

22:04So we travel to Al-Ghatt and we see a seven-day wedding. And this ceremony didn't come easy because Jamal spent the last 10 years building his own home using his own money, working for various companies trying to save as much as possible. He even had to travel for four years to Tripoli, which is around 1 ,300 kilometers away from his hometown, where he stayed there for like 40 years working and saving as much money as possible. Also, Jamal suffers from a kidney problem that, you know, impacted him greatly. But despite all the troubles, all the problems that he faced, his home is now built and he's ready to get married.

22:46In that region, in Al-Ghatt, in Libya, and these are like the Tuareg traditions that we're seeing in this film. it's a seven-day wedding where you don't have a certain number of people that you're inviting for your wedding. It's everyone in the town that's going to come and celebrate your marriage with you. Jamal talks about how expensive everything is now and how expensive this is going to cost him. He's paying for three days and his uncle and his brothers are paying for the rest. So it's a celebration of cultures and we can see during these seven days they wear different robes and they wear different colors for the bride, for the groom, and for the people, there's like celebration every day.

23:25There's music, there's dancing.

23:31The clothes, you know, that we see him wear, there's the very distinctive blue scarf that is the sign of Tuareg, you know, that blue navy color, that is their color.

23:48so in one of the days of the celebrations we see the groomsmen and jamal they sit together and they wear this blue scarf that we spoke about and this blue scarf is wrapped in a way that's so distinctive it covers all of their face you can only see their eyes and you know this is keeping up with the tradition of the tuarek people that lived their whole life in the desert and they used to use that wrap to protect themselves from the sun and for a long time you know they used to be called the blue people because the dye they used to use for that scarf used to rub on people's skins. You know, these traditions are still being held onto and we see them clearly in this ceremony and we see the food as well, the traditional couscous of North Africa, their traditional tea and their traditional drink that's made out of dates.