She was one of Afghanistan’s biggest stars. Then the Taliban returned to power and she fled the country. Now, Aryana Sayeed is taking her music and message across Europe – with one key difference: the audiences will be women only.
Sayeed remains one of the most recognisable faces in Afghanistan, building a huge following as a singer, an outspoken advocate for women’s rights, and from her time as a judge on The Voice Afghanistan and other major talent shows in the country.
But when the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan in 2021, her life and career changed dramatically. Unable to return home or perform there, Sayeed has continued her work from abroad, using her platform and her organisation DEFAW (Defenders of Equality, Freedom, and Advancement for Women) to speak out for Afghan women and girls living under what she calls “dark days.”
Five years on, she is taking her message of hope across Europe with her “Ladies Only_”_ tour, a series of concerts exclusively for women. The tour begins this Friday in Rotterdam, where Sayeed will perform at the Laurenskerk. She will then head to Stockholm on 5 September, followed by Hamburg on 26 September and Wiesbaden, near Frankfurt, on 3 October.
Ahead of the shows, Euronews Culture spoke to her about what sparked the idea behind her Ladies Only concerts, the current situation facing women and girls in Afghanistan, and the message she hopes to share through her music and activism.
When did you come up with the idea for a ladies-only tour?
Aryana Sayeed: Well, I have been planning to do this Ladies-Only tour for the past three or four years. Since the Taliban took over the power in Afghanistan, you know, they literally banned women from most things. Like, they have banned schools for girls past grade six, and women are not allowed to work anymore.They are not even allowed to go to the park. You know, like some simple things in life. They’re not allowed to do it anymore.
So when all of this happened, obviously, besides my singing career, I am also an activist for women’s rights in Afghanistan. And I thought, you know what? We need to stand against this injustice, against the Taliban and what they’re doing. And so I thought initially it would be a great idea to do this Ladies-Only concert where we show the power of women, where we stand together as women, and raise our voice and raise awareness against the injustices that are going on in Afghanistan and stand up for the millions of voiceless women in Afghanistan.
Many people around the world will know you from The Voice of Afghanistan. How influential has your voice been in Afghanistan, and how big are you there?
Well, it’s really hard to talk about yourself and say how big you are, but I know that the things that I have been doing in Afghanistan for the past, I would say, 15 years have been quite effective. It has had major effects on the society. It has been able to give so much hope to the hopeless women of Afghanistan.
Empowering them in a way to think differently, to know their rights and to stand up for their rights and things like that. As much as I’ve been focused on my singing career, as much I’ve been focused on my activist side as well, trying to give voice to the voiceless women of Afghanistan.
I used to be a judge on these talent shows, and I used to be present there during all of these problems and issues as well. Even before the Taliban came, Afghan women did not have their full rights at all. Before the Taliban came, things were getting along really well, and the things that we were doing in Afghanistan, the effect it had on society, was going really well.
Since the Taliban returned to power five years ago, do you feel more free and more heard outside Afghanistan, as a performer and as someone delivering a message of hope?
Even when I was in Afghanistan, I still had my concerts outside of Afghanistan. I still was touring all this time. For me, there’s no major difference in that field. But I do feel that we are very isolated now. I do feel like there’s so much that I could do in my country. There’s so much more that I could. But right now, I am unable to do that because of the fact that I’m not allowed to go back to Afghanistan. I’m not allowed to physically be there, be on the screen of the TV, give out my messages, be that support and that hope for the Afghan women.
But the one thing that I’m grateful for is the fact that we were able to establish the organisation outside Afghanistan. I have this organisation called DEFAW, which stands for Defenders of Equality, Freedom and Advancement for Women. And through the organisation, I’ve been trying to be active and do my activism through that and raise awareness and try to be the support for the voiceless women of Afghanistan, do interviews all around the world and try to be, you know, as helpful as I can.
And the great thing is that in Afghanistan, we still have YouTube, we still have all these platforms where women can be connected with me, so they can still hear me, they can still see my videos.
You can’t completely silence voices like yours, particularly when young girls can still access your work online. What message would you give to those girls who look up to you?
The one advice that I constantly keep giving them is not to give up hope because honestly, they are living in the dark, dark, dark ages right now. I speak to around 100 Afghan women or girls inside Afghanistan on a monthly basis through my organisation, through Zoom. And I actually get to speak to them, ask them questions, hear their stories. And what they tell me is heartbreaking, quite sad.
They literally talk without crying because of the fact that they’ve been abandoned from school and from work, and they feel so hopeless and they feel so useless as humans. Most of them have to just go ahead and get married, you know, at a young age because they don’t see a future and they don’t have another choice.
Let’s say a woman who doesn’t have a husband and doesn’t have somebody to support the family with the income, with the food, with the money and everything. What is she going to do? And she’s not allowed to go to work. So the only choice left for her is just go to bed. That’s it. And so it’s really sad to hear all these stories.
Because I honestly, I do feel from the bottom of my heart that these dark days will pass. They will not exist forever. This is, at least as a human, what I think, because what they have brought upon women in Afghanistan is ridiculous and inhumane, and this kind of a life, I don’t think it’s going to last forever.
People will eventually raise their voices. People will eventually stand up against them, and justice will prevail. Maybe it will. I don’t know when. Maybe it will last another two, three, four or five years. But it cannot be forever. I don’t believe that.
Men will obviously have a crucial role in making that change happen. What is your message to Afghan men, both inside Afghanistan and those living in exile?
I have literally made videos on social media and asked the Afghan men all around the world, and particularly in Afghanistan, to stand up for the rights of their women, for their mothers, for sisters, and for the women in general. And that’s my message to them. I have a strong feeling that unless Afghan men come together and stand up for the women, women alone cannot do much for themselves.
And in order for this change to come, or for the women to have their full rights, men need to start supporting them. And I have seen a glimpse of, you know, their support here and there. Of course, not inside Afghanistan yet, but I have seen Afghan men getting together for protests outside the country, like, for example, in Germany and the U.S. and other countries like this, which is a good sign, which is a good thing to happen.
And hopefully, there will be more of that in the future.
How would you describe your music?
Well, I mostly sing pop. My songs are pop. That’s how I started. I started with R&B and then pop music, but then I also have a lot of traditional songs. Funny enough, when I went to Afghanistan for the first time in 2011, I mixed a few songs of, like, old 40, 50-year-old songs and I made them with new music, and I presented them on the stage to people and people just loved those songs.
For me, that gave me kind of this indication that people still love the traditional music. So I do traditional music, but also a big portion of my songs are dedicated to the rights of Afghan women. And those are the ones that are the most effective in the society, I would say. And I actually performed some of them at the European Parliament, at UNICEF and all these big government gatherings that take place.
And it’s been amazing. And this is the part of my career I love and enjoy the most. The songs actually, you know, give me something that is very fulfilling as a human being and that performing well.
You mentioned what music means to you as a human being, so I can’t let you go without asking about artificial intelligence. A significant proportion of music streamed these days is either created or influenced by AI. Are you open to using AI in your music?
I find it scary. I honestly am not for AI at all. I don’t like it. It scares me and it makes me worried of where are heading. I know in a way it’s – it can be really good. It can be fantastic. But in a way we are losing that human touch. For example, nowadays they can even create the sound of the singers, they can create my sound, they can create my videos when I’m not even there.
And that scares me. That’s not nice. I feel like the human touch should exist, and it should be there. And you cannot even compare it with AI at all. And I don’t like AI, and I don’t use it, and I’m not for it. I don’t support it at all.