In 2021 I interviewed Californian musician Lanny Cordola for SPIN. He was at the time holed up in Islamabad, Pakistan, after just escaping Kabul, unknowingly on the last flight out of Afghanistan before the Taliban took over again. He didn’t know he’d narrowly escaped, he was just off to renew his visa…
Lanny had been teaching guitar to girls in Kabul, Afghanistan since 2016. He’d set up a school and an organization for them and their families, and named their band The Miraculous Love Kids, aka Girl With a Guitar.
Things were going relatively well, besides having to vacate a couple of school buildings due to explosions from suicide bombers, but that was daily life. The music gave them a thread of hope to cling to, and Cordola’s California music connections gave them a unity with the outside world and from there, incredibly, the chance to collaborate with some big musicians.
The Afghan girls hadn’t grown up having to wear burkas, or cover themselves, they’d had relative freedom to prior times, due to the American military presence for 20 years in Kabul. Times were still hard however, their fathers’ only income may be selling sunflower seeds on the street, or the girls had to help the family by begging.
Cordola lifted them out of that harsh reality by giving them guitar lessons, sometimes in a beaten-down place with a fan, if they were lucky, in the dry, oppressive heat before the power went out. But the girls diligently came after morning school each day, and he’d pay them $2 each time so that they wouldn’t have to beg on the streets.
Cordola’s tenacity in improving the girl’s lives and teaching them music, songs, lyrics, and the guitar grabbed the attention of a few renowned musicians, including members of The Eagles, Rage Against the Machine, Portishead, Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Nick Cave, Blake Shelton, and others, who have all performed virtually with the girls. Subsequently grabbing them international fame, appearing on CBS, ABC, the BBC, TMZ, NPR, SPIN, Rolling Stone and of course WONDERLUST.
It’s such an amazing story.
Just listen to “Fly Like an Eagle” with Sammy Hagar and Chad Kroeger from Nickelback. “Sammy did the vocals on his iPhone,” explains Cordola. But they made a video that is incredibly moving and historic, considering its source in a horribly war-ravaged country. The inspiration and hope for a better world for these girls, who so defied an ingrained cultural tradition that has not valued or encouraged women, is immense.
They sing for the women of Afghanistan. They sing for children of war-ravaged countries.
“That’s the power of music when it’s used in the right way to evoke emotions and tell stories. The guitar is a lifeline for the girls,” says Lanny.
Afghanistan was never really a female-friendly place. Girls have been negated at best and horribly abused at worst. “You tell them that they are equal to boys, it’s a mind-blowing concept for them!” explains Cordola. “Even before the Taliban came in there were problems. The girls couldn’t walk around the streets with their guitars, they’d get attacked or harassed. So, they all kept guitars at their houses and at the school”.
That was pre-2021 and the Taliban takeover.
Now however, as is widely known, the Taliban don’t like girls being educated nor approve of art or music. Although Afghanistan has a rich culture and music history, it’s illegal again. The Taliban really hate music….. In the past month, still, they were burning pyres of the last remaining musical instruments they’d found. And a couple of weeks ago all females were banished from public parks. There goes Afghanistan tourism.
When Cordola sees the Taliban he sees lost, dark, souls, now emboldened with American weaponry. “Before they were pretty primitive dudes with nothing else going on. They don’t want you even to smile. You can’t fly a kite, they just want women to cook, make babies, clean, and be a receptacle for their physical, sexual, and verbal abuse.”
From Islamabad, Pakistan he had to appeal to the government there to help get the girls and their families out of Kabul, and — perhaps a disturbing thought — safely into Pakistan.
It took months of painful waiting and undercover communication, and tragically for them the girls had to destroy the guitars Kiefer Sutherland had given them, the ones they had learned on, for fear of their lives, literally. But they made it. To Pakistan.
“Getting out of Afghanistan was quite tricky and multifaceted,” says Lanny Cordola. “Jellybean was the lead; she was able to obtain passports for her and her family and they were the first girls to arrive in April 2022. Others came after, some with passports some without — the brutality mixed with buffoonery prevented others from getting passports… they would beat some of the parents for wanting passports, and truth be known, they [the Taliban] were baffled by the process of how to run a civil society. Each family had to return to their home region to seek passports, that’s why some were able to obtain them and some were not.
“Jellybean came through the safest route which is called the Torkham border. The others came via smugglers through the much more dangerous and tenuous route of the Spin Boldak to Chaman crossing. They faced brutal weather conditions, the threat of getting caught by the Taliban, harassment from border guards, and other dangers. True heroines they are.”
Jellybean organized most of it, Lanny says. “I raised the needed funds. The girls and their families were bound and determined to get out of Afghanistan.
“Thankfully this week we have got them all on paths to getting passports here in Pakistan.
“It has its moments of agony. I gotta tell you the girls have been outstanding. They are like daughters to me. I’ve been helping raise them.” says Godfather Cordola. “When you look at the songs we’ve done, we strive to have love and mercy for our fellow beings.”
He goes on to say: “Tom Morello is the coolest rock star, the guitar is a major component of who he is, but his spirit is so much larger. He believes that music should aim for transcendence, should have a higher cause.”
And for Cordola and the girls and their families, it certainly does.
“Jellybean, her first video playing the lead guitar part and she’s sharing the screen with Tom Morello. Now you and I know who Tom Morello is — Icon Guy — but these girls have no idea who they’re playing with or the impact of these stars. No clue. He’s just Mr. Tom who cares about them and plays really cool electric guitar. He gets a kick out of that.”
He doesn’t know when they will have the epiphany of, oh yes, my first guitar solo was with Tom Morello…. OMG, the first song we played was with Brian Wilson… My first vocal duet was with Blake Shelton…
He reflects on Kabul, “driving down the street in Kabul you see the girls on the street begging, the men with no arms and no legs, and it’s heartbreaking but that’s what you see every day”.
Cordola is determined, and his life has taken on a higher cause. A wonderful wild unexpected journey.
Two years ago, at the end of September, in Kabul I managed to talk to Jellybean briefly undercover. The Taliban had taken over, and she and the girls were hiding and waiting. Sounding spirited, optimistic, and hopeful, her English surprisingly good from six years of learning Western songs with Mr. Lanny. She was one of the first girls to come to the Miraculous House as they call it. Suddenly banished from school in her birth country and having to go out in a hijab, and never alone in the street.
Jellybean remembers school as a good place for her to learn, so she can have “a good future and help other girls and people of Afghanistan and other poor countries — this is my great ambition” she said with deep resolve.
Their musical journey continues. Through the videos we get to experience their growth over the past few years as with so many experiences they are becoming young ladies, singing and playing virtually with international stars, their stage a mountain hilltop, an ancient ruin, or a field. Because that’s what they have.
It’s incredibly impressive.
This summer The Miraculous Love Kids released their video with Blake Shelton – the Tom Petty song ‘I Won’t Back Down’ featuring ex-Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum, followed by a collaboration with Nick Cave, another with Beth Gibbons of Portishead, and one with E from The Eels. These girls are on a mission.
When I asked who they’d like to play with the most, they have their sights on “Fragile” with Sting, and Jellybean wants to sing “In the Name of Love” with Bono… I wonder who gave them that idea?
The girls are now living in Islamabad, “three separate homes close to each other – six family units, nine girls and twenty family members.” Cordola proudly adds.
Since we started following their journey he also now teaches them not only music but “history, geography, English and the like, six days a week.”
And soon they’ll be going back into the studio to record a collection of original songs along with collaborations with Sheryl Crow and Tom Morello.
You can follow the girls directly at https://miraculouslovekids.org