A little over a year ago, music simply wasn't heard in Kabul.

As part of their interpretation of Islamic law, the Taliban banned and destroyed all musical instruments and permitted only unaccompanied religious chant and songs in praise of the Taliban. But the censorship of music in Afghanistan didn't begin with the Taliban. The Mujahideen-led government that was established once Soviet forces withdrew in 1989 strongly objected to women singers and forced many musicians into exile. Kharabad, the old musicians' quarter of Kabul, was completely destroyed in the fighting between warring Mujahideen groups in the early 1990s.

Within a couple of days of the Taliban's departure, however, TV was up and running and music was back on the radio. Only three musical instruments had survived on the radio - a rubab (the Afghan lute which is considered the national instrument), a sarinda (fiddle) and a pair of tabla drums but over the past year, some 120 musicians have returned to Kabul from Pakistan, including two female singers, and the Indian government has donated a large number of instruments.

Kabul is now bursting with cassette shops and video stores. But tensions continue and, while female singers are permitted on radio, despite opposition, they are still kept off television.

55 year-old Sulam Logari is one of the most respected singers of Afghanistan. Before the Taliban he was a regular performer on Afghan Radio and TV and went into exile in Pakistan where he worked as a cook in a hotel during the Taliban period. He was born about 30km from Kabul in Logar province (hence his name). He sings in Dari, the Afghan form of Persian.

Gul Zaman is probably the leading Pashto singer of the country. He also spent the last years in exile in Pakistan where he performed on both radio and television.

Ghulam Hussain is a leading player of the rubab. He was born in Kharabad, the old musicians' quarter of Kabul (now in ruins) and studied there with the country's most celebrated rubab player Ustad Mohammad Omar (who died in 1980). After his house was rocketed in the civil war in 1991 and his children injured he left for Pakistan. He's been back in Kabul four months and has set up a rubab school on the edge of Kharabad.

The Hazara comprise about twenty percent of the Afghan population and were particularly repressed by the Taliban for their independent spirit. They are concentrated in the centre of the country where the famous Bamyan Buddha statues were located. Tawakuli didn't go into exile and amongst the Hazara managed to keep playing and performing even during the Taliban period. He accompanies himself on a long-necked lute called the dambura.

Mashinai is the elder brother of Sulam Logari and he remained in Kabul during the Taliban period. His son was killed in the Mujahideen in-fighting and his house destroyed. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996 they destroyed his instruments. Mashinai spent the next five years working as a butcher, hacking meat in the bazaar, to keep his family alive. Now he's back at the radio playing the sarinda that survived in a storeroom. The sarinda is a bowed fiddle, carved out of wood into a rather skull-like shape.

The singer, Taj Mohammad is one of the most popular musicians in the north of Afghanistan. Aged 60, he lives in Sheburgan and is in Kabul specially for the Global Party. He regularly recorded for Afghan radio and TV before the arrival of the Taliban and had to flee before they took Shebergan. He returned to Afghanistan eight months ago.