Afghan institute wins music's 'Nobel Prize'

STOCKHOLM, Feb 14 (AFP): An Afghan music institute that has empowered girls in the war-torn country 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 in the war-torn country.

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

Sarmast, who has faced substantial risk in a country where both music and girls' education was banned under the repressive 1996-2001 Taliban regime, said he was "very excited, honoured and privileged" to win the prize.