CULTURE | Afghanistan: White City Wakes Up Afghanistan and Central Asia
May 2011 | Travka, Ru, and Andronik
Interview by Daniel J. Gerstle, edited by Sue Rissberger
Humanitarian Bazaar Magazine (originally called HELO back in the old days)
We caught up with Travka, Ru, and Andreas of the Kabul-based rock band, White City, this weekend as they were tearing up Kazakhstan on part of their Big in the ‘Stans Tour. It was just a couple months ago when HELO contributor and friend Una Moore told us a story about a set of Western musicians headlining expat parties in Afghanistan.
One story was that the band was mentoring Afghans who wanted to get into rock music in an otherwise inhospitable club scene! Another story now legend was that they ran a “Rock House” which bubbled with parties that would make the Taliban furious. How much of these stories were true?
Take a listen to our interview with White City and learn their story in their own words. Click the player above, and enjoy their tunes “Roll the Dice” and “Perfect 10.” Soon our podcast will be on RSS feed and iTunes. For now, LISTEN! If you prefer the transcript, see below.
We were lucky enough to talk to the Kabul-based rock band, White City, as they travel through Central Asia on their “Big in the Stans” tour. Travka, Ru, and Andronik originally traveled to Afghanistan as expatriate crisis responders. But life in the Afghan capital called for social gatherings and stress relief.
The trio figured, if they could bring clothes, computers, and DVDs to a war zone, why not guitar, bass, drums, and amps? After headlining a few expat parties and giving advice to emerging Afghan musicians, the group decided to form permanently as White City, focusing on rallying Central Asians who want to produce and listen to rock music.
HELO: Thanks for talking with HELO Magazine. If you don’t mind, can you paint a picture of where you are, and introduce yourselves?
Travka: We’re White City. We’re currently in Almaty which is in Kazakhstan. We have four concerts lined up here in the next week. And I’m Travis, or Travka, the guitarist.
Andronik: I’m Andronik, or Andreas, the drummer and backing vocalist.
Ru: I’m Ru, the bassist and vocalist.
HELO: Excellent. So you’re on the Big in the Stans tour, and you’ve reached Kazakhstan, have you found any surprises along the way?
Travka: Oh yeah. Yeah, lots of surprises. Definitely. We find that with each country we go to the culture is dynamically different than the last country. The people are very hospitable and the Stans really are, the Stans. There are a lot of leftover remnants of the Soviet Era and it’s quite romantic in a lot of ways.
Ru: We were told when we were coming to this area, that people don’t like rock. Or maybe only in the capital cities people will like rock but it’ll only be Russian people. And we’ve found completely opposite to that. We’ve gone out to the regions, we’ve played to kids, and we’ve found that there’s actually a real thirst for the kind of rock music we play, and there’s also a real thirst for them to learn from us. They need mentorship. They need that kind of support. They want to make rock music, which is totally the opposite to what we were told.
HELO: Are there certain bands that you’ve been meeting along the way that really stood out to you?
Travka: I think Osh was the most prominent for us so far. I mean, we went down there and we were linked up with this NGO, which was a female NGO run by four young women. Totally self-sufficient. Not incorporated with a bigger NGO or anything more on a national or international level. And these young girls had a youth organization and they basically ran the whole of Asch city and all the youth programs and we connected with them, and they were just amazing. I mean, they did just an amazing event for us, and local Asch youth, and it was all off grassroots levels. It was really amazing.
HELO: Well, I’ve had a chance to look through the Big in the Stans web site. If anybody else is interested, it’s BigInTheStans.com.
Everyone: Stans plural.
HELO: And I remember, I looked back at some of the earlier photos, and it looked like you were playing just about everywhere. Old Soviet soup kitchens, parks, children’s playgrounds and things. How do you choose where you’re going to jam?
Travka: Well, a lot of it comes from being on the road and we sort of do a lot of traveling, and we see a cool place and we stop. On route the other day we spotted a restaurant. A Turkish restaurant called, Kebabistan, so we decided to do our final concert in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in this Kebabistan restaurant. We went there and we ordered some food and some drinks and we just took over the restaurant and played a concert. So we like to do things on the moment, spontaneous, and catch the crowd or public by surprise. And have some fun with spontaneity.
HELO: That’s fantastic. I mean, were you able to do that when you were playing Kabul?
Travka: Nooo. In Afghanistan it’s forbidden or it’s not part of their normal culture to play music in public. You can play a cassette or CD through your stereo but live performances are only done behind closed doors and in private compounds.
HELO: Let’s go back to the core of what you’re about. I first learned about you from our friend, in Kabul, there was apparently a story about the “Rock House of Kabul.” [laughter from all] It sounded like your band was actually mentoring Afghan musicians, and maybe you would’ve crossed paths with the band, Kabul Dream. So, first of all, what the hell were you doing in Kabul? I mean, everyone else is staying away but you plunged right in. And maybe you had other work you were doing?
Travka: Andreas should answer that first because he’s been there the longest.
Andronik: Well, I got there, the first time in 2000. I worked there for three years and then returned back there in the end of 2006. I went with a Swedish NGO. I was keen on playing music because I used to play music in the past so I looked around to see if I could find musicians. WC started off basically as a band to entertain at parties and embassies and stuff like that. Doing covers. But then along the road Travis and Ru turned up in 2008 and 2009. And then we kind of formed the three-piece White City. Which is more into doing rhythms and old music, originals. And two years later we’ve been here, doing the tour of the Stans.
HELO: And what was the Rock House about? Apparently there was an old one and now a new one?
Travka: The House of Rock was a house that I started with some Afghans a couple years ago. All the foreigners who were with Afghan in Kabul, it was all sort of abnormal. I could probably name all the foreigners on one hand and we started this house. We were just playing loud music and having fun and we built a studio and we had our band practice there and then some other bands were practicing in our studio and then the Afghans left the country and went to live in Europe. Ru moved in and then before the tour Andreas moved in so it just sort of turned into the House of Rock. And we had a really nice studio there and we like to play loud music and it’s a bit of a hub for local musicians to come down and hang out. We talk about music, we do some mentoring and it’s just a place where people can come with their interest in music.
HELO: What do you think is real, or maybe misunderstood about Afghanistan’s relationship to rock music and punk and that kind of thing? People hear about the Taliban’s ban of recorded music, so they must wonder…
Ru: There’s sort of a dual attitude here. If you look at some of the Afghan bands’ videos on YouTube, for example Kabul Dreams, and you’ll get comments like, “This is just an example of America’s westernization as Afghanistan’s stringed instruments are banned under Islam.” But there are dichotomies and contradictions in every single Islamic country around the world. I think, much like we found in Central Asia, people associate rock music with the West. They don’t really understand what it is and what it can do and how they can make it. But what we found is a lot of young Afghans are listening to western rock music but not necessarily making western rock music. They’re interpreting it in their own way and they’re making it their own.
HELO: To what extent do you think it’s maybe a risk? A risky choice for a young Afghan to learn how to go and play loud music?
Travka: I think it is a risk, but all the Afghans that we know and we work with and we play with, they know the risks. It’s a calculated risk. I think a lot of them would prefer to take that risk so they can have the freedom of expressions through the music rather than be silenced by peer pressure from their community or from certain elements, like the Taliban. They ask me these questions all the time, ‘Can we do this? Can we do that?’ And I always answer them saying, ‘Well you know your country better than me, you make the final decision.’ We are not trying to control these kids or influence these kids. We’re just giving them an opportunity.
HELO: Are they ever running into obstacles, like security obstacles when they play at concerts?
Travka: There are classic stories, like Jalalabad, a city south of Kabul had numerous music shops where they sell CDs and music being burned down. There have been stories of wedding musicians tied up in trees over night and their instruments being snatched. It does exist but Kabul is a bit of an island, a bit of an oasis where as an Afghan you can live a westernized lifestyle and not have so much pressure from your community as in some of the other regional capitals around the country.
HELO: Yeah, talk about a rock ‘n roll irony. To be tied up in a tree and have someone else smash your instrument.
[Laughter all around]
Travka: Yeah, it’s kind of cool, huh?! It hasn’t happened to us.
HELO: So what are your musical roots? How would you describe your music?
Andronik: Well I think we come with our different musical backgrounds and experiences. And it also depends on our age in the band. So I sort of bring in a flavor of 70’s progressive music and stuff like that. And then Travka bringing in his…
Travka: I’m a little bit younger than Andronik. Not a lot but a little bit younger so I’m more of an eighties, nineties teenager. So I have my classic rock, punk kind of influence. And then the cool thing is that Ru is even younger than us but she still has very similar tastes in music.
Ru: Yeah, I’m a child of the 1980s but I was brought up first with grunge and also a lot of Brit art punk, that sort of thing. And then I discovered experimental-punk, post-punk of America. But we all have so many different influences. Yeah we’re grounded in this kind of post-punk rock but we also have influences that range from everything from western jazz to music we hear in Afghanistan and ethnic influences.
Travka: The funny thing is we’ve actually, in the last three weeks we’ve played ten concerts. And we’ve actually gathered fans in each city and fans will keep coming back to our gigs. And then they start to know our songs and even sing along with some of the choruses or the verses. One of the most popular songs is, “Fever,” which is a song about…the chorus goes, “Fever, vodka, travka, circa,’ which is beer, vodka, marijuana and bitch.” The locals love this song. It just seems to hit a note with them. We get people singing along to our songs and they’ve never really heard our music before.
HELO: If there are any other musicians in the world, are there any you would really want to jam with?
Travka and Ru: We’d have to say Josh Holmes from Queens of the Stone Age. And Mike Patton. Mike Patton of course from Faith No More.
HELO: Yes!
Travka: Andreas, have you got one? They’re a bit older I think. Dying out.
[Laughter]
Andronik: I’d love to do a duet with Neil Young.
Ru: But what we love about these musicians is the variations in the music they make. They don’t just make one kind of music. They’re always changing all the time and that’s what we kind of hope to do as we develop more.
HELO: Yeah, speaking of Mike Patton, he once spit White Castle hamburgers on me, as a member of the audience. Back with the Mr. Bungle thing.
All: Ahh…Mr. Bungle…
HELO: He must’ve gone off his medication or something because he was wearing this mask that made him look like a mass murderer and he came out eating White Castle hamburgers and French fries and just spit it all over the audience before the first song. It was probably in my hair when I went home. [Laughter] It was a good time to crowd surf.
Ru: Yeah, Patton’s fantastic.
HELO: Classic question I’ve asked other musicians in the past: If you could construct a zombie super band from dead rock stars, who would you put in this zombie super band?
Travka: Oh, wow. Neil Young?
[Laughter]
Ru: He’s not dead.
Andronik: He’s practically dead. Joe Strummer?
Travka: Yeah, Joe Strummer as rhythm guitars and I’d put Jimmy Hendrix as lead guitar. Drummer? Who would I put as drummer?
Andronik: Keith Moon.
Travka: Keith Moon as the drummer and bass guitarist?
Ru: John Entwistle, from The Who.
Travka: Do they have to be dead?
HELO: Well, I guess technically you could kill a living one first. [Kidding]
Travka: We could arrange that. We have friends in Kabul who are good with that. We know people. [Kidding]
HELO: Or you could invite them on a USO tour and do it yourself.
Ru: Oooh. [Reacting to something off line.]
[Chaos erupts on the line.]
Ru: They’re hitting me, Daniel!
HELO: What’s going on?
Travka: We’re hitting our lead singer because she’s a total flirt when she gets in contact with journalists.
Ru: You have a nice beard [in your photo] so they hit me.
Travka: You’ll write a nice article now that she said that?
HELO: Ahem. [Transitioning awkwardly.] Um, okay, quick. If you’re in a crashing plane, and you have three minutes left, what do you do?
Travka: Turn the amplifier up to 11.
Ru: Well, we’d play our shortest song if we only have three minutes.
Travka: We don’t have any three-minute songs.
Ru: Yes, we do.
Travka: No, we do not. We’ll just play two verses and two choruses.
HELO: Wow. Playing your music even in the last three minutes.
Travka: Fuck yeah. That’s the best way to die, man, playing your own music. For sure.
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