Dr. Annie Gray

Basically, music was banned under the Taliban.

Listening to music, satellite was banned.

Classic images of videotapes and audiotapes being strung up from wires, etc.

So anyone listening to music was listening underground.

Then, on the 11th of September 2001, everything changed.

You're listening to the BBC World Service.

I'm Lise Doucette.

There have been terrorist attacks in the United States.

In New York, two airplanes have deliberately crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

Both towers have collapsed.

The 9-11 attacks on the United States of America were planned by the head of the al-Qaeda terror group, Osama bin Laden, who was based in Afghanistan.

After the Taliban refused to hand him over to the US, an invasion was launched by the Americans with NATO allies alongside anti-Taliban Afghans.

By December 2001, the Taliban had been removed from power in Kabul and the majority of the country.

Jahid and his family had left Afghanistan just before the Soviet invasion, moving to Australia.

They decided to return and set up a media company.

Historically, music has been a big part of Afghan tradition.

And we saw that as an opportunity and all the media that was being set up was very news focused.

And you could almost feel the weight on people's shoulders of listening to news for the last 30 years at that stage of war and what have you.

And the music industry was kind of destroyed.

We started off with a music format and then it was pretty obvious within the first few weeks that there's going to be a lot of issues unless we build up the local music industry.