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Rebab from Badakhshan, Dotar from Herat and a Pashtun Sarinda-gichak
Tanbura and Rubab; Kabul
Sarinda (Saroz) from South-West Afghanistan
Sarang from Kabul
Ghichak from Tashqurghan (North Afghanistan)
Zang-e san
Tabla
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Afghanistan, whose previous name was Ariyana, was so named about a century and a half ago by King Ahmad Shah. In the interchange of cultures in Asia, Afghanistan - the land between the Oxus and the Indus - has always been an important crossroad. For centuries, whoever occupied the passes of the Hindu Kush ruled the doorway to India and China. Persians, Indians, Turks, and Mongols all have their kin in this country and have had their influence upon the character and culture of the Afghans. The Afghans are proud of their heritage, especially of such national traits as honesty, hospitality, and friendliness. The music of Afghanistan is deeply rooted in tradition and folklore, and it is very much alive in the
heart of the people. It is an essential part of their life, and a colorful expression of the national temperament.
In the 70's; the Author had the privilege of spending two years in Afghanistan conducting ethnico-musicological research; mostly in the city of Herat, and also in Kabul. At that time, the people of Afghanistan had a rich and diverse music culture. First there was the art music of Kabul
and other cities such as Herat and Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif; secondly, modern genres of popular music at and disseminated by Afghan's only radio station; Radio Kabul; later called Radio Afghanistan; and thirdly a plethora of regional 'folk music'
styles characteristics of various ethnic groups inhabiting different parts of the country. A number of genres of religious recitation and singing must also be mentioned; though they do not fall within the Afghan category of 'music', most obviously because they do not involve the playing of musical instruments, a matter
considered in more details here after.
Afghan art music
Afghans believe, with some justification, that music from their part of the world had a significant influence on the classical music of northern India. It was a two-way process. In the 1860s Amir Sher Ali Khan invited classically trained musicians from northern India to work at his court in
Kabul. In due course their descendants established a distinct form of Afghan art music.
The main genre is the Ghazal, an Arabic word which refrs to one of the principal forms used in Persian and Pashto poetry, constructed of a series of couplets following a particular rhyme scheme. Ghazal also indicates a musical form for the singing of this kind of poetry, a form which
is also well-established as 'light-classical' genre of Indian music. The Kabuli Ghazal generally uses Persian texts, often from great poets such as Hafez, Sa'adi, and Bedil, and much of this poetry has a strong spiritual and mystical content. The music is based on the rags (melodic
modes) and tals (metrical cycles) of the Indian music, but has some distinct features, notably the repetitive use of fast instrumental sections interpolated between units of text; a characteristic which can be linked to Pashtun music. Since at least 1920s it has been
usual for the Ghazal singer to accompany himself with the hand-pumped Indian harmonium ('Armonia), backed by a small group including Rubab (a plucked lute - the national Afghan instrument), Tabla drum pair), and often bowed lutes such as Sarangi and
Delruba, and the Tanpura drone. Apart from the Rubab; all those instruments were adopted from northern India.
Popular radio music
Radio broadcasting in Afghanistan was initiated in 1925 during the reign of Amanullah. The radio station was destroyed in 1929 in the uprising against his modernist policies, and there was no serious attempt to resume radio transmissions until Radio Kabul was officially opened in 1940,
with German equipment and assistance. From this time the radio station started to take over from the Royal court as the main center of music patronage and institutional sponsor of new developments in music, employing many of the important musicians in the country on its staff.
During world war II broadcasting was seriously hampered by difficulties in obtaining new equipments or spares from Germany. An effective broadcasting service that could be received in most parts of the country was not established until mid-40's. Ownership of radio receivers was
very limited, and to insure the dissemination of radio broadcasts, receiver appliances in a number of cities were linked to loudspeaker systems in their main streets. They broadcast the news, music and other programs, in the public places that were the domains of men. In the 1960s a new
radio station was built on the outskirts of Kabul, and radio Afghanistan was launched.
Afghan popular music originated in response to the need to create a style suitable for radio broadcasting. The original music of mixed :Pashtun-Tajik areas near Kabul (such as Parwan) provided the models on which the new popular music broadcast by the radio station was built,
bringing together Dari (Afghan Persians) or Pashto texts, the Pasthun musical style, and northern Indian theory and terminology. The development of Afghan popular music took place with the assistance of master musicians (Ustads), descendants of Indian's court musicians,
whose knowledge of Indian music theory and terminology and high standards of performance were important for organizing small ensembles and large orchestras at the radio station. They played a key role in training musicians, both amateurs and professionals.
Many new songs i the popular style were created by composers and musicians working at the radio station. Others were originally regional folk songs performed in the popular style. In this way many of the folk songs of Afghanistan were given a new lease of life by radio broadcasting.
There was also an input from the Indian and Pakistani films regularly shown in the cinemas of Afghanistan, and from the popular music of other neighboring countries such as Iran and Tajikistan, 78rpm records, and personal contacts.
Afghanistan had little in the way of formal music education and music such as was not part of the primary nor the secondary school curricula. Some school teachers (women as well as men) were themselves keen amateurs musicians, and might organize informal musical activities for
their pupils, such as occasional concerts for invited audiences to display the children's talents (especially in singing). There was little in the way of conservatories or schools of music, university music departments, art council or national sound archive. The radio station in Kabul
played a crucial role as the national center for musical activity, as well as the national broadcasting station, with all the demands for scheduling and time-keeping that role demanded. It was in part a conservatory, providing permanent post for musicians and composers, and it had record
and tape archives. Radio Afghanistan was a bastion of modernism and institution led to considerable upgrading in the status of musicians and
composers, singers; males or females; professional or amateurs... In some cases they came to enjoy the "star" status.
The singer Ahmad Zahir is a good example of the process, he was from an aristocratic family (Mohammadzai) and his father, Dr. Zahir, was for a short time prime Minister. The family was wealthy and cosmopolitan. Ahmad Zahir represented the most westernized form of Afghan music at
the time (1970s); he played the electric organ, accompanied by instruments such as trumpet, electric guitar and trap drum set; instruments not available to the average amateur enthusiast. He was murdered in Kabul in 1979, and his funeral cortege was followed by many
hundreds of grief-stricken women fans weeping and wailing. His recordings, re-released on many CDs, are very popular among Afghan exiles in the West. The new respectability conferred by radio was most remarkably shown in the way it allowed a number of women singers to achieve fame.
Hitherto, women who sang in public (like in theatre) were closely associated ; at least in the minds of the people; with prostitution. Now a number of women fro highly respectable families came forward. The best known was Ferida Mahwash, who worked as a secretary at the radio
station. Her singing career began in the 1960s, and in 1976 she was given the honorific title of Ustad (Master musician) by the Afghan Government. Radio had a further significance, according to ethno-musicologist Mark Slobin (writing in 1974):
"Radio Afghanistan is one of the few unifying factors in a country unusually marked by ethnic and linguistic fragmentation.. For the Afghan nomad or villager... the radio has drastically reduced the restrictions on the scope of his imagination... he shares in the music of the Kabul station, one of the few manifestations of an emerging pattern of national values and expression that may eventually a pan-ethnic, distinctively Afghan society"
Building on Slobin's idea it has been argued that the creation and broadcasting of a style of popular music that brought together elements of the two principal music systems; Pashtun and Tajik; played an important role in expressing and creating an Afghan national identity in the 20th
century. It was one of the structures that held ethnically diverse Afghanistan together in the past.
Regional music
Afghanistan is home to a variety of regional music characteristic of the ethnic groups inhabiting the different parts of the country, tough there are many similarities between them. The various have close relationships with the music of adjacent countries: Iran, Pakistan, Uzbekistan,
Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. Pashtun regional music is of particular importance, forming the basis of radio popular music style. Song-texts are in many cases 'traditional', i.e. with not known author, but there are also many local poets whose work in song form enjoys
local fame. The national instrument is the Rubab, a short-necked lute with sympathetic strings. Long-necked lutes such as Tanbur, Dutar and Dambura are widespread, as are bowed lutes like the Sarinda, Sarang and Ghaichak. There are, however, very few instrument types which are exclusive to
Afghanistan, the Tanbur and 14 stringed Herati Dutar being two exceptions. Women's domestic music is of great importance. There are genres of song accompanied by the Daireh (frame drum), and the drum is also used to play rhythms for dancing. Another wide spread kind of music is
that for sor-na ad dohol (shawm and double-headed frame drum) which has an important role in village wedding festivities for staging processions and for group dancing by men.
Song texts
It would be hard to over-emphasize the importance of poetry in Afghan culture, irrespective of what language we are dealing with. This is a country with important literary poetic traditions that go back many centuries. The Persian language poetic tradition, shared with Iran, is of great
significance. Pashto poetry also has considerable historical depth. Poetry is a national preoccupation and many afghans consider themselves to be poets. Structurally; there is a close relationship between poetry and music. Poetry calls for special modes of recitative performance, and
in one sense, music is simply a vehicle to deliver the text.
Song texts in Afghanistan in the past dealt with a rather limited range of topics. Love songs being very important, with frquent allusion to the Leyla and Majnoon story. The rose and the nightingale (gol o bolbol) constituted two central symbols in this poetry. What is generally lacking in
traditional Afghan song texts is topicality. They did not deal with current events or with real life experiences.
Religious recitations, chanting and singing
In Afghan thinking about sound art a basic distinction is made between 'music' and other types of vocal performance which are deemed quite separated from music. The Persian word for music is 'musiqi', derived from the Greek "mousike'. In the Afghan view, the concept of music is
closely linked with musical instrument either played bby themselves, or to accompany singing. Unaccompanied singing in itself is not labeled as 'music'. This system of classification explains how is that some kind of performance are considerate to be quite separate from music.
The best example is the recitation of the Holy Koran. While value is attached to a mellifluous voice; this kind of performance is usually considered (in Afghanistan) to have nothing to do with music. Koranic recitation is perhaps a special case, for the Holy Koran is regarded as the Word of
God miraculously conveyed to His Prophet, Mohammad, and the language is Arabic, as is the Azan (the call to Prayer).
There are other kinds of vocal performance of a religious kind, such as the Sufi ritual of Zikr, the recollection of the Names of God, in which short sacred texts in Arabic are chanted by a group of Sufis, combined with forceful expiration and inspiration of the breath and
vigorous rhythmic movements of the body, altogether contributing to a state of ecstasy. Such an activity, while undoubtedly musical for a western commentator, is not regarded as a manifestation of 'musiqi' by Afghans. Around the circle of Zikr recites one, two or more singers walk slowly, singing religious
poetry in Persian in praise of Prophet Muhammad. Songs of this kind are called Na't. They may also be sung on special day (such as Prophet Muhammad's Birthday) in the Mosque. In Kabul, adherents of the Chishti Sufi used standard musical instruments (armonia,
tabla, rubab, etc...) to accompany their singing of mystical Ghazals. According to Chishti belief, music is qaza-yeh ruh, "food for the soul", a form of spiritual nourishment. For Shi'a members of the Afghan community, of which there are many in certain parts of the country, practice for mourning in the
month of Muharram involve yet other kinds of solo and group singing (rowzeh, nowheh, manqasat and mursia), also conceived of as quite separate from music.
All this musical activity was disrupted by the war that started with Taraki's coup in 1978, and ended with the defeat of the Taliban. Today, musicians and the institutions that support them are trying to rebuild the rich music culture of the recent past.
By John Baily; British musicologist specialized in Afghan music; teacher at the London University.
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