The Day The Music Died: Afghanistan's All-Female Orchestra Falls Silent

The orchestra, called Zohra after the Persian goddess of music, was mainly made up of girls and women from a Kabul orphanage aged between 13 and 20.

Negin Khpalwak was sitting at her home in Kabul when she got word that the Taliban had reached the outskirts of the capital. The 24-year old conductor, once the face of Afghanistan's renowned all-female orchestra, immediately began to panic. The last time the Islamist terrorists were in power, they banned music and women were not allowed to work. In the final months, they carried out targeted attacks on those they said had betrayed their vision of Islamic rule. Dashing around the room, Khpalwak grabbed a robe to cover her bare arms and hid away a small set of decorative drums. Then she gathered up photographs and press clippings of her famed musical performances, put them in a pile and burnt them.