John Baily’s relationship with Afghan music began almost accidentally, shaped by curiosity, movement, and a deep personal interest in Afghanistan. Raised in a household where music was ever-present, Baily arrived at Oxford University to study experimental psychology, but spent much of his time immersed in the blues, performing with a band. A post-university overland journey, first toward Australia, then across other continents brought him into Afghanistan for the first time. Passing through Herat, he encountered a city that felt frozen in time: horse-drawn carts, ancient fortresses, and a rhythm of life untouched by modern urgency. That brief encounter left a lasting impression, planting the seed for what would become decades of ethnomusicological work.

Years later, as Baily’s academic interests shifted toward Indian and Central Asian music, Afghanistan resurfaced as a focal point. Listening to recordings of the dutar, a two-stringed instrument central to Herati folk traditions, he became captivated by its sound and social meaning. With grants secured to financially support him, Baily returned to Herat with his wife, Veronica Doubleday, he committed himself not only to documenting Afghan music but to learning it. Living among musicians, he came to understand how deeply contested music was in Afghan society: essential at weddings and celebrations, yet viewed with suspicion, even danger. Professional musicians often came from barber families, their craft occupying a low social status despite its cultural necessity. Music existed everywhere, but rarely without caution.

Learning to play Afghan instruments offered Baily a rare form of access, a shared language beyond words. Through teachers like Karim Dutari, who transformed the dutar by expanding it into a more complex, multi-stringed instrument, Baily witnessed how Afghan musicians innovated within tradition. His research traced how these changes emerged from real needs: to be heard on radio, to compete sonically with instruments like the rubab, and to adapt local music for national audiences.

When Baily returned to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban in 2001, he was struck by how quickly music re-emerged. Instruments reappeared in Kabul’s markets almost overnight and musicians reclaimed their place in public life. From wedding halls to classrooms, music resumed its role as both memory and renewal. In the years that followed, Baily expanded his focus to Afghan communities in exile, from California to Europe, observing how Afghan music adapted abroad while remaining tethered to its roots. Across borders and decades, he found the same truth repeating itself: Afghan music bends, shifts, and survives but it also carries memory by the people who refuse to let it disappear.