For nearly five years, under the Taliban, music was banned in Afghanistan. But now a group of women are at the forefront of bringing music back to their homeland and changing the misconceptions of their country to audiences around the world.

No one claims the influence of the Taliban is gone completely but the decision of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music to create a women's orchestra in 2015 would have previously been unthinkable.

Afghanistan's first all-female orchestra will tour Australia for the first time.

Zohra Orchestra, which will tour Australia this month, is comprised of about 25 girls between the ages of 14 and 20 and is led by the country's first-ever female conductors: Negin Khpalwak and Zarifa Adiba. Zohra is named after a Persian goddess of music.

The country has a rich tradition of music but between the Soviet invasion in 1979 and the fall of the Taliban in 2001, the Taliban enforced a strict ban on music – leading to the migration of many musicians and the death of the country's musical and cultural life.