Final Year Project

Project Title

Songs from a Burning Harmonium: Sonic Reconstruction of Identity among Afghan Refugees in Urban Karachi

Description

This thesis examines how Afghan refugees in urban Karachi reconstruct identity, belonging, and memory through sonic practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with Afghan refugee youth and families, the project explores how music, language, and everyday listening function as modes of self-making in conditions of displacement. This study argues that identity reconstruction is not merely cognitive or narrative but fundamentally auditory and relational. Afghan refugees navigate Karachi’s dense and often hostile sonic terrain, while simultaneously sustaining sonic continuities through Afghan songs, raga-based musical traditions, and Persianate linguistic forms. Rather than framing these practices solely as hybridity, this thesis highlights tensions between cultural continuity and imposed political borders.