STOCKHOLM: An Afghan music institute that has empowered girls and metal pioneers Metallica on Wednesday shared the Polar Music Prize, often called music’s Nobel.

The laureates will each receive one million Swedish kronor ($125,000) at a televised gala in Stockholm on June 14 in the presence of King Carl XVI Gustaf.

The Afghan National Ins­ti­­tute of Music was honou­red along with its founder, Ahmad Sarmast, who star­ted the school in 2010 in a rare coeducational initiative.

The institute, which teaches both Afghan and Western music, helped generate the country’s first all-female orchestra which performed last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Sarmast, who has faced substantial risk in a country where both music and girls’ education were banned under the Taliban regime during the 1990s, said he was “very excited, honoured and privileged” to win the prize.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2018