HOWLS FROM THE UNDERGROUND Persecution, Protest Music and Travis Beard’s RocKabul
We see four men – lanky, floppy-haired, tufted with goatees – sporting Converses and Pink Floyd T-shirts. They play air guitar and air drums; they make the sign of the horns with their hands. They’re into Metallica logos, and they rehearse atonal noise in a graffitied basement riddled with spiders and mice. ‘Where did you learn to play drums?’ asks an off-screen Australian voice. ‘Nowhere,’ replies Pedram, the drummer.
Music documentaries have covered the myth of the lost, fallen artist before – Finding Fela (Alex Gibney, 2014), No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorsese, 2005), countless Kurt Cobain tales. They’re redemption fables, often. Australian filmmaker Travis Beard’s RocKabul (2018), however, follows an aspiring metal band from first rehearsal, to first gig, to final downfall. District Unknown was, in the early 2010s, the only metal band in Afghanistan, comprising Pedram, guitarist Qais, bassist Qasem and vocalist/guitarist Lemar. Rather than the music doco’s usual loci – the tour or the music industry – RocKabul’s backdrop is twofold: the bombs falling outside the band’s homes and gig venues in their war-stricken homeland, and the surging metal music scene comprising young Afghans seeking rebellion and belonging, identity and community.
Beard’s documentary begins with then–US president Barack Obama calling for more drones and a stronger military presence in Afghanistan. But RocKabul isn’t crafted from news archives or voices from outside Afghanistan, instead centring on street-level views of people living in the country and
