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Symphony for a fallen leader
Symphony narrator saw in Massoud hope for Afghanistan
Haron Amin left L.A. to join guerilla fight for his country
Feb 11, 2004

By Tim Smith
Sun Music Critic
Originally published February 11, 2004

On Sept. 9, 2001, two days before the rest of the world was changed forever,
the country of Afghanistan was changed forever - and by the same agent of
death, Osama bin Laden. On that day, some of his followers, posing as TV
journalists, carried out a suicide bombing. Their target was Ahmed Shah
Massoud, leader of the Afghani resistance against the invading Soviets
during the 1980s and then against the repressive Taliban regime that
sheltered bin Laden.

Massoud, already a hero among freedom-seeking countrymen before his
assassination, became the equivalent of Afghanistan's patron saint
afterward. His life and death have had an influence far beyond his
struggling nation's borders.
One example of this can be heard tonight at the Peabody Institute, when the
Peabody Wind Ensemble gives the premiere of The Lion of Panjshir (Symphony
No. 2) for Narrator and Symphonic Band, composed by Peabody alum David
Gaines. The narrator will be Haron Amin, a former colleague of Massoud and
currently Afghanistan's ambassador to Japan, who worked closely with Gaines
to help select the texts.
"I wanted the music to be specifically evocative of Afghanistan and that
part of the world," says the composer about the 20-minute piece. "There are
traces of Iran, Uzbekistan, even India in the score. I use some very generic
Persian and Middle Eastern scales, as well as one I created myself."

Gaines also had in his head music that Massoud liked - the Afghan Embassy in
Washington sent the composer some of Massoud's favorite CDs - as he
fashioned the score, which has a good deal of Arabic flavoring in some of
its melodies and dance rhythms. "But I didn't want this piece to sound like
a pastiche, the work of a white American guy who doesn't know anything about
the music of that region," Gaines says. "Aaron Copland, a Jewish guy from
New York, created music that suggested the Old West. I'm not comparing
myself to Copland at all, but I do think it's possible to evoke another
style."
The orchestral portion of Gaines' work fulfills multiple functions -
protagonist, commentator, background mood-setter - while the text paints a
portrait of Massoud the man, the warrior and the humanitarian. (He became
known as the Lion of Panjshir for having repelled the Soviets from his home
base in the Panjshir Valley of Afghanistan.)

Before beginning the project, Gaines knew little about the subject. "It all
started literally in my living room," he says, "when I saw a National
Geographic special not long after 9/11 that featured Sebastian Junger's
reports about Massoud. That was the first time I heard of him."
Some of Junger's writing about Massoud would eventually be incorporated into
the composition, along with additional material gleaned from conversations
the composer subsequently had with the reporter. Passages from a book and
documentary film about Massoud also are in the text. But The Lion of
Panjshir contains few of Massoud's own words; he did not leave a substantial
body of writing behind.
"The text contains only about half of what I started out with," Gaines says.
"I had to chop and chop and chop. But a lot had to be in, including some
Persian poetry, which Massoud loved."
Among the lines Gaines could not part with when it came to editing the
narration were those from a press conference Massoud held in Paris in the
spring of 2001. "He warned President Bush to clean things up in Afghanistan,
or it would come back to haunt him," Gaines says.

For that passage in the score, "the woodwinds are very low and ominous, with
very fitting chords," says Harlan Parker, conductor of the Peabody Wind
Ensemble. "David has a real knack for orchestrating for winds. He's written
a great part for contra bass clarinet, which makes a cool, eerie kind of
sound. From the first time David came to me about the piece in the spring of
2002, I thought it was extremely intriguing."
For Gaines, 42, who received his doctorate from Peabody in 1998 and lives in
Northern Virginia, this new work represents a departure from his usual, more
abstract compositional style. But it is very much in line with his own
beliefs. "I'm a political person," he says, "so for people who know me, this
new work makes perfect sense. I'm a Green Party person. I worked for Ralph
Nader. This piece is not so much a case of siding with one ethnic group over
another, but about being pro-tolerance, pro-freedom, about being for
progressive ideals in a part of the world where that has not been very
popular."

Gaines is a longtime proponent and fluent speaker of Esperanto, the language
that aims to create an inclusive internationalism; his first symphony,
composed for his doctoral dissertation at Peabody, has a vocal part in
Esperanto. So it's not surprising that he should have been drawn to Massoud.
"Both liberals and conservatives are intrigued by him," Gaines says. "The
committee that signed his nomination for Nobel Peace Prize reflected a
remarkable range of people. And although Afghans are linguistically divided,
they all had the same reaction to Massoud's death. This speaks to his
universal appeal."
Underlining that point in The Lion of Panjshir is a quote from an aide to
Massoud after the assassination: "Now we are all Massoud."

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