Songs Behind Silence: Musicians in Exile

Music is akin to a mirror to society, culture, and ideology which reflects the engraved joys, struggles, and revolutions. It has never been a mere medium for entertainment; the hopes, dreams, and even regrets of the masses are what drives musicians in making music and draws people. However, for many artists, such an act of creating music becomes the catalyst that forces them into exile and leave their country and their people.

To escape persecution, unethical censorship, or violence, musicians often move beyond borders, and many of them end up reshaping their lives and career by channeling personal loss into songs which eventually become anathematic to revolution and resistance. Their stories reveal the crux of indomitable urge of  creating a piece of art; and that is “art survives everything.” It is fascinating how exile redefines someone's identity, and how melodies possess uncanny ability to shake the foundation of authoritarian regimes. 

This article dives into the lives of musicians in exile, how it influences their craft, brings in substantial changes in their homeland’s cultural landscape, and tears down fallacious political narratives.

Fleeing Homelands Amidst Turmoil

Being exiled is almost never a choice for anyone. Riddled by incessant political misappropriation and ruthlessly oppressive regime, musicians unwillingly leave their own home and settle in a foreign country. In most of the cases, they are left with no other options since their music has become a liability. 

Take the example of Victor Jara, a Chilean director, poet, singer-songwriter and political activist. His works are quintessential in developing Chilean theater and his music   became synonymous to Salvador Allende’s socialist movement in the 1970s. Gos songs became synonymous with Salvador Allende’s socialist movement in the 1970s. Following the coup of Augusto Pinochet that toppled the government, Jara was assassinated for his music’s political potency.

In Iran, music is heavily censored, so much that to thrive the underground rock scene has to operate in secrecy. Iranian artist Mohsen Namjoo, who is known as “the Bob Dylan of Iran,” and whose music is a unique blend of ancient and contemporary sounds, was arrested for blending Persian poetry with bluesy critiques of theocracy. After being charged with “insulting Islamic sanctities” in 2009, Namjoo fled to Europe, where he continues to produce music banned in his homeland.

While we are at it, I would like to mention another musician, Masha Alekhina of the Russian punk collective Pussy Riot, who kind of represents a generation of Russian artists who have fled abroad to escape imprisonment for challenging Vladimir Putin’s regime. In April 2022, she fled the country disguised as a delivery driver after the announcement of her sentence to time in a penal colony.

The Sound of Displacement

All three of the stories that we came across so far do have one common thing among them. It is the hypersensitivity to criticism. Paired with insatiable greed for power of government. This is usually the primary factor for most of the cases of exiling. Governments equate music with subversion, thus for a musician exile becomes the price of truth-telling.

Cut off from their roots, musicians deal with nostalgia for their country apart from alienation in their new home. For these reasons, they feel the urgent need to redefine their place in the world. This often ignites and fuels an artistic evolution. In a way, exile fractures identity.

For “Fela Kuti”, Nigeria’s Afrobeat pioneer, exile was crucial. After releasing "Zombie"(1976), where he critiques Nigeria’s military government, soldiers raided his commune, beat him and threw his mother from a window. Fela had to flee to Ghana but returned months later, his music fiercer and more politically charged. His sound—a fusion of jazz, funk, and Yoruba rhythms—had become a weapon, inspiring pan-African solidarity.  

In Fela's case, being exiled had created hybridity. However, in contrast, Syrian pianist “Malek Jandali” took his exile as an opportunity to preserve cultural heritage. Born in the “capital of revolution,” Homs, Syria, which was one of the worst-hit areas during the three-year Syrian conflict. Surviving a 2011 attack, Jandali relocated to the U.S. His music reimagines ancient Syrian melodies with orchestral grandeur. It is his personal grief and a plea for peace.  

But, unfortunately not all transformations are redemptive. Many artists lose their career and identity after being exiled in a foreign country. Even if they made a name for themselves again, their music becomes a dialogue between memory and reinvention—a search for belonging in the dissonance. As Cuban legend “Paquito D’Rivera,” who defected to the U.S. in 1981, described exile as a “spiritual amputation.”  

Reshaping a Nation’s Musical Identity

Exiled musicians rarely fade into silence. Rather, their work often transcends borders which influences not only the country they reside in, but also their homeland’s cultural trajectory from afar. 

Artists are always more sensitive to their inner self as well as their environment. If exiled, it can only be imagined how deeply they might experience every emotion from fear to sadness. They cannot ever sever their ties with their homeland and their people. They still feel the need to do something for their fellow countrymen.

Following the ban of “Miriam Makeba” by South Africa’s apartheid regime in 1960 for testifying against it at the UN, she became a global icon. It was quite the opposite of what the oppressive regime wanted or anticipated. Her hits like Pata Pata introduced the world to African rhythms, while her activism kept horrors of apartheid regime in the spotlight for every pair of eyes of the world to see. Though banned from her country for three decades, Makeba’s music kindled and supported the anti-apartheid movement, proving that exile could amplify a message rather than stifle it.

Epilogue: The Unsilenced

Exiled musicians are more than refugees—they are archivists of memory and they have an immaculate ability to fight their trauma, and be the architects of change. The said change is not necessarily for their own sake, in majority of the cases, it is for the sake of their people, and their collective hopes and dreams. 

Their songs are the touchstones, forged in the crucible of displacement, that challenge the notion that mere borders can contain ideas. From Fela Kuti’s defiant and raucous music to the whispered tone of underground Syria ballads, their music transcends geography, turning exile into a bridge between the silenced and the free.