Afgan Orchestra

[RKrishnamurthy]

Yesterday while on transit at Chicago's O'hare, I saw a news item on CNN that showed an orchestra from Afghanistan performing at the Kennedy Center. Apparently, the US govt has pumped lot of money to start the Western classical music oriented orchestra and to invite them on a US tour. What was interesting was to see instruments like sitar, sarod and tabla featuring very prominently in the orchestra. I was wondering if there is any precedence for such an ensemble.