Home > Music of Afghanistan

1 Overview

Since the 1980s, Afghanistan has been involved in near constant violence. As such, music has been suppressed and recording for outsiders minimal. During the 1990s, the Taliban government banned instrumental music and much public music-making. In spite of arrests and destruction of musical instruments, Afghan musicians have continued to ply their trade into the present. The capital of Kabul has long been the regional cultural capital, but outsiders have tended to focus on the city of Herat, which is more closely related to Iranian music. Lyrics across the country are typically in Persian or Pashto.

The classical musical form of Afghanistan is called klasik , which includes both instrumental ( ragas, naghmehs ) and vocal forms ( ghazals). Many ustad, or professional musicians, are descended from Indian artists who emigrated to the royal court in Kabul in the 1860s. These ustad use HindustanHindustan may relate to any of these another name by which the country India is called A term for the pre-Islamic political culture of India. HMS Hindustan one of the eight ships of the King Edward VII class battleships "Hindustan" ( 1918), a popular publi terminology and structures. Afghan ragas, in contrast to Indian ones, tend to be more focused on rhythm, and are usually played with the zirbaghali , daireh or dohol , all percussive instruments. The rubab is a common luteThe lute is a plucked string instrument with a fretted neck and a deep round back. It evolved from an instrument originally developed in the Middle East, which was also the ancestor of the superficially similar oud. The words 'lute' and 'oud' are both der-like instrument in Afghanistan, and is the forerunner of the Indian sarodThe sarod is an Indian classical musical instrument which probably originates from the Senya rebab, an Indio-Persian instrument played in India to the 19th century. It is a 25-stringed lute-like instrument, whose body is hand carved from a single block of. The rubab is sometimes considered the national instrument of Afghanistan, and is popular elsewhere; one reviewers claims it sounds like "a Middle Eastern predecessor to the bluesBlues is a vocal and instrumental musical form which evolved from African American spirituals, shouts, work songs and chants and has its earliest stylistic roots in West Africa. Blues has been a major influence on later American and Western popular music, that popped up in the Piedmont 100 years ago" [1] ( Piedmont bluesThe Piedmont blues is a type of blues music characterized by a unique fingerpicking method on the guitar in which a regular, alternating-thumb bass pattern supports a melody using treble strings. The Piedmont blues typically refers to a greater area than). Other Afghan instruments include dutarThe dutar (Also dotar or doutar is a traditional long-necked two-stringed lute found in Central Asia. Its name comes from the Persian word for "two stings", dotar (do "two", tar "string"). When played, the strings are plucked, not stummed. In the instrume, sorna , sitar, dilruba , tambur and ghichak .

Afghan popular music arose in the 1950s when radio broadcasting became commonplace in the country. Ahmad Zahir, Parwin , Biltun and Mahwash , especially the latter's "O Bacheh", were important early pop musicians.

Afghan folk music is traditionally played at weddings and other celebrations, and is rare for mourning. Wedding parties are usually segregated. Men are usually entertained by a male singer with a dhol or tabla drum, while accompaniment was typically a rubab or tanbur. Women usually sing and dance all night, but mostly to male entertainers as the profession is considered dishonorable for a woman. At home, women often play the daireh , a drum which is supposedly sanctioned by the Koran.

A traveling people known as Jat (related to Gypsies) sell instruments door-to-door and play their own variety of folk music, using a shawm and dohol , which are considered untouchable by non-Jats. The Jats frequently play for weddings, circumcisions and other celebrations as well.