AFGHANISTAN It is Afghanistan's national instrument with a dark ...

° T O O L S O F T H E T R A D E : T H E A F g H A n R U B A B °
42 Songlines October 2010
fghanistan is a great place for lutes of all kinds
– long-necked, short-necked, plucked, and
bowed. But the king of Afghan instruments is
the rubab. It lies at the heart of Afghan music,
deeply embedded in Afghan national identity
and spirituality. It has a deep, woody sound.
And although its plucked sound doesn’t
resonate long, it certainly does resonate
amongst the people. “There is a spiritual
quality about the instrument. It’s a pure sound
that comes straight from the heart – and
connects with the soul,” says Ghulam Hussain,
the leading rubab player in Kabul today. “For
me this music has a direct relationship with
God. When I’m playing I close my eyes and I
feel as if I’m in another place.”
The very name rubab is said to be a
combination of two Arabic words: ruh,
meaning ‘soul’ and bab ‘doorway,’ so the rubab
is ‘the doorway to the soul.’ It is a
Tools oF
The TRAde
The
AFGhAN
RUBAB
AFGHANISTAN It is Afghanistan’s national instrument with a dark
and muscular tone. As two leading players visit the UK, John
Baily lifts the veil on an instrument that is too little known
PHOTOS SI MON BROUGHTON U N L ESS STAT ED
manifestation of the Sufi-infused culture of
Afghanistan that prevailed until 30 years ago,
when war brought the fundamentalism and
puritanism that eventually led to the Taliban
outlawing musicians and musical instruments.
Nevertheless, many Afghans still adhere to
the Sufi doctrine that music is qaza-ye ruh
(food for the soul). The rubab is celebrated in
Sufi poetry, and in legend. In the Pashtun
tragedy of Durkhanai and Adam Khan, the
renowned beauty Durkhanai falls in love with
Adam Khan, who is a fine player of the
instrument. Adam Khan dies in battle with
his rival; Durkhanai pines away with grief. It is
said that those who aspire to play the rubab
well should select a wooden plectrum made
from the trees that shade the lovers’
communal grave. Unfortunately, nobody
knows where they are buried.
Rubab Roots
The origins of the Afghan rubab are also
unclear. It is a member of an ancient family of
double-chambered lutes that also includes the
Iranian tar, the Tibetan danyen, the Kashgar
rewap in Xinjiang and other form of rubabs in
the Pamir, India and China. Its most
distinctive features are its stocky, boat-like
shape and sympathetic strings. The
instrument is usually beautifully decorated
with mother-of-pearl so it looks like an art
object in its own right. With minor differences
the Afghan type of rubab is also found in
adjacent areas of Pakistan, Iran and Kashmir.
The Afghan instrument isn’t particularly
ancient and was probably devised in the 18th
° T O O L S O F T H E T R A D E : T H E A F g H A n R U B A B °
Left: Ghulam Hussain
pictured near his home in
Kucheh Kharabat, the old
musicians’ quarter of Kabul
century in Kandahar, Kabul, Ghazni, Peshawar
or some other city with a sizeable Pashtun
population. It was also popular, in the 19th
century, amongst the Afghans settled in the
Rohilkhand area of North India, especially
around the city of Rampur, who traditionally
served as mercenaries in the Mughal armies
and were involved in the supply of horses from
Central Asia to India for military purposes.
Although many Afghans believe the instrument
originated in Ghazni, it is quite possible that it
was originally created in Rohilkhand, in India.
Sometime in the mid-19th century, the
essentially folk-based Afghan instrument was
transformed into the Indian sarod. The main
development is the metal fingerboard which
gives a smoother, more sustained sound and is
more suited to the complex ragas of Indian
music (see the Tools of the Trade on the sarod
in #17). Credit for this innovation is hotly
contested between rival sarod-playing families
today, as discussed in Adrian McNeil’s
magisterial book Inventing the Sarod.
The rubab has a special connection with
the Pashto speaking population of Afghanistan
and embodies certain features of Pashtun
regional music. Its special acoustical
properties are suitable for a fast percussive
style of playing, with emphasis on
permutations of right hand stroke patterns
and dramatic rhythmic cadences. The layout
of notes on the fingerboard of the rubab
suggests the tonal organisation of the three
main melodic modes of Pashtun music:
Bairami, Kesturi and Pari. The rubab is thus
the ‘ideal’ Pashtun instrument. »
www.songlines.co.uk Songlines 43

IllustratIoN: BaIly/MIoNet
° T O O L S O F T H E T R A D E : T H E A F g H A n R U B A B °
The Rubab
Nut
skin belly
Four frets
Pegs for
sympathetic strings
two or three
drone strings
three main
strings
Bridge
strings
holders
Top: Rubab players for hire in
Peshawar, Pakistan
Above: Jawed Qaderi from
the renowned Qaderi family
of rubab makers in Kabul
Left, top to bottom: the neck
and frets; mother-of-pearl
decoration – note the
songbirds; the skin-covered
belly where the strings are
plucked; the decorated body
of Ghulam Hussain’s favourite
instrument made by Azim
Qaderi
Rubab Repertoire
Alongside a rich repertoire of folk music, the
rubab is also widely used for playing the art
music of Kabul, where it is the principal
instrument accompanying ghazal singing, as
we can hear in the work of great singers like
Rahim Bakhsh, Hamahang and Amir
Mohammad. As a poetic form, the Kabuli
ghazal (usually in Persian, but sometimes in
Pashto) consists of a variable number of
couplets, with the same rhyme scheme running
through the whole poem. In performance,
double-tempo accelerating instrumental
sections on the rubab are interpolated between
the texts sung at a slow tempo so a ghazal has
the character of a dialogue between the singer
and the rubab player. The texts of ghazals are
very often of a Sufi spiritual nature, by poets
such as Hafez, Bedil and others.
In addition to this role, the Afghan rubab is
also used for playing two types of instrumental
music. One is the naghma-ye chahartuk (four
part instrumental piece), often used as a group
instrumental at the start of a concert, intended
to warm up the instruments, the musicians,
and the audience. This allows the rubab player
to exploit the rhythmic possibilities of the high
drone string in what might be described as
‘Afghan minimalism.’ The other genre is the
naghma-ye klasik (the classical instrumental
piece), the Afghan equivalent of Indian alap
and gat, which allows ample scope for melodic
improvisation. The art of playing classical
music on the rubab was pioneered by Ghulam
Jailani and Mohammad Omar and is these
days pursued by Homayun Sakhi and Khaled
Arman of the Ensemble Kaboul. Arman has
added more frets to make it easier to play high
up, making it more like his first instrument, the
Spanish guitar.
Mulberry – With
strings Attached
The rubab has three main playing strings
(tuned in 4ths), four frets (giving 12 semitones
to the octave), two or three long drone strings,
and up to 15 sympathetic strings. It is the
sympathetic strings that give the rubab its
special sound. They are tuned to the notes of
the raga being played, and reinforce the sound
of each note as it is played. They produce a
wash of sound, with complex interactions
with the harmonics of each string. It’s like
having an echo chamber built into the
instrument. Some rubabs have empty
eggshells glued inside like tiny cups that
amplify the sound. The shortest sympathetic
string is raised by a protuberance on the
bridge so it can be easily struck in isolation
and used as a high drone in the complex
rhythmic patterns that are the hallmark of the
virtuoso player.
The favourite wood for the body of the
rubab is mulberry – and in particular the
variety called shah tut (king mulberry). The
lower chamber has a skin belly, while the upper
has a wooden lid that serves as the fingerboard.
This is usually highly decorated with intricate
mother-of-pearl inlays, laid out in the form of a
tree of life, with leaves, flowers, and songbirds
such as nightingales or canaries. Afghans have
a great love of birdsong, especially when
combined with the sound of music and
understand that such birds are attracted by the
sound of music and are stimulated to sing in
response to it. The frets are of nylon line tied
around the neck. Their positions are not
changed according to the raga being played.
Some rubab players in Herat, notably Rahim
Khushnawaz, have tied two extra frets to their
rubabs to allow the instrument to play the
neutral seconds of Iranian music.
44 Songlines October 2010
PasCal laFay
sIMoN BrouGHtoN
KHaleD arMaN ColleCtIoN
The rubab is played with a wooden, bone, or
horn plectrum (shahbaz) and requires a special
posture for the right hand, with the wrist
sharply flexed. With the weight of the hand
behind it, the downstroke has a more powerful
sound than the upstroke, especially when the
hand also impacts on the skin belly, adding a
certain percussive element. The different
permutations of down and upstrokes produce
subtly different rhythmic patterns. As for the
left hand, most rubab players tend to use just
the first and third fingers to stop the strings. It
is easy to play within the limited fretted range
(an octave plus a wholetone), but advanced
players ascend above this which requires great
skill and lots of practice to keep in tune.
Rubab Maestros
Ghulam Hussain is a master of both ghazal
accompaniment and solo playing. His father,
Habibullah, played for many years with ghazal
singer Rahim Bakhsh, and I had the
Top to bottom: Ensemble
Kaboul featuring singer
Mahwash and rubab player
Khaled Arman; Ghulam
Hussain performing with his
ensemble in Ryad Moqri at
this year’s Fes Festival; the
first Radio Orchestra with
rubab player Mohammad
Omar at the back, 1943
Far right: Homayun Sakhi,
who plays the Barbican in
September
discography
° T O O L S O F T H E T R A D E : T H E A F g H A n R U B A B °
Various Artists, Rough
Guide to the Music of
Afghanistan (World
Music Network, 2010)
alongside rubab
recordings from Ghulam Hussain (his only
commercially available recording), rahim
Khushnawaz and Homayun sakhi, this includes
popular and folk music from afghan musicians
inside and outside the country. reviewed on p83.
Songlines Digital subscribers can
download a track from this album.
See p58 for details
Mohammad Omar,
Virtuoso from
Afghanistan
(Smithsonian
Folkways, 2002)
the celebrated 1975 concert in seattle, with Zakir
Hussain on tabla. Contains three of Mohammad
omar’s most important classical compositions.
Rahim Khushnawaz,
The Rubab of Heart
(VDE-Gallo, 1993)
Herat’s outstanding rubab
maestro, in recordings
made by John Baily in 1974. these include the
classical instrumental music of Kabul and local
Herat folk melodies. rather charmingly, some
tracks have canaries singing in the background.
Homayun Sakhi, The
Art of the Afghan
Rubab (Smithsonian
Folkways, 2005)
an outstanding younger
player of the rubab nowadays based in Fremont,
near san Francisco. He has extended the use of the
high drone to new heights of virtuosity. a top of
the World review in #37.
Khaled Arman, Rubab
Raga (Arion, 2003)
Based in Geneva, Khaled
arman (also leader of
ensemble Kaboul) has
made various innovations to the rubab, such as
adding frets to aid the playing of more classical
repertoire. reviewed in #20.
Daud Khan, Tribute to
Afghanistan
(Felmay, 2004)
Daud Khan plays both
rubab and, as a student
of amjad ali Khan, the sarod. this CD contains a
selection of classical and folk pieces.
reviewed in #24.
opportunity to hear and record them perform
together several times in the 70s at Ramadan
concerts. Ghulam Hussain grew up in a
hereditary musical family in the Kucheh
Kharabat, Kabul’s musicians’ quarter. He
learned initially from his father and uncle, but
in due course became the student of
Mohammad Omar (1905-1980), the doyen of
rubab players in the 20th century and the
originator of the stylistic school named after
him. “Ustad Mohammad Omar was the
person who inspired me most,” says Ghulam
Hussain. He was a prolific composer of
classical compositions, and light instrumental
pieces for the small radio orchestra that he
directed. He is credited with inventing the
high drone technique that is the hallmark of
his style. Most rubab players today
acknowledge him as the greatest master of the
instrument in living memory.
In 1973 I myself started playing the rubab
under Mohammad Omar’s tutelage, going
regularly to his house for lessons. While I gave
him cash for my lessons, Ghulam Hussain, as
Mohammad Omar’s official student, paid for
his tuition through service, and he used to
serve up the tea during my lessons. In 2003 he
was appointed as one of four teachers in the
newly created music school of the Aga Khan
Music Initiative for Central Asia, established
to revitalise the vocal and instrumental skills
needed to perform Kabuli art music. Seven
years on he is still there, teaching, making
periodic concert tours to the West, and doing
his best to generate interest in this wonderful
instrument. As he says, “I am happy to play
rubab and I want to develop the instrument
more and make it popular throughout the
world.” May his ambitions be blessed with
success. l
dATes Homayun Sakhi plays with Alim
Qasimov at the Barbican on September 19,
www.barbican.org.uk
Herati rubab player Wahid Delahang is on
tour from September 18-26, www.amc.org.uk
PodCAsT Hear John Baily’s rubab
demonstration and a recording of Rahim
Khushnawaz on this issue’s podcast
www.songlines.co.uk Songlines 45
aGa KHaN trust For Culture