Rabab The Music For Warriors

The rabab has a special connection with the Pakhto speaking population of Afghanistan and embodies certain features of Pakhtoon regional music. Its unique acoustical properties are appropriate for a fast percussive style of playing, with emphasis on permutations of right hand stroke patterns and dramatic rhythmic tempo. The layout of notes on the fingerboard of the rabab suggests a tonal organization that is given concrete expression in the three main melodic modes of Pakhtoon music:Bairami, Kesturi and Pari. The rabab is thus the 'ideal' Pakhtoon instrument. It is also widely used for playing the art music of Kabul, where the rabab is the principal instrument for the accompaniment of ghazaal singing, as we can hear in the work of great singers like Ustad Rahim Bakhsh, Ustad Hamahang and Ustad Amir Mohammad. As a poetic form, the Kabuli ghazaal (usually in Persian, but sometimes in Pakhto) consists of a variable number of couplets, with the same rhyme scheme running through the whole poem. The term ghazaal also shows a musical form for the singing of this kind of poetry, characterized by a cyclical organization, with double-tempo accelerating instrumental sections interpolated between units of text sung at a slow tempo. In performance, a ghazaal has the character of a dialogue between the singer and the accompanying rabab player. The texts of ghazaals are very often of a Sufi spiritual nature, by poets such as Hafez, Bedil and Amir Khosrow. In addition to this role, the Afghan rabab is also used for playing two types of instrumental art music. One is the naghma-ye kashal, 'the extended instrumental piece', often used as a group instrumental at the start of a concert of music, intended to warm up the instruments, the musicians, and the audience. This type allows the rabab player to exploit the seemingly endless rhythmic possibilities of the high drone string in what might be described as 'Afghan minimalism'. For the purposes of this tutor I have chosen six modes that are particularly appropriate for the rabab. The other type is the naghma-ye klasik, 'the classical instrumental piece', the Afghan equivalent of Indian alap and gat, which allows ample scope for melodic spontaneity. Many of the rags of North Indian music are known in Afghanistan, sometimes under rather different names (for example, Bhairavi become Bairami, Bhairav become Beiru), and with different melodic characteristics