Homayun Sakhi, Afghan rubâb
with
Salar Nader, tabla
Homayun Sakhi is the outstanding Afghan rubâb player of his generation, a brilliant virtuoso endowed with a charismatic musical presence and personality. His artistry demonstrates how an imaginative musician working within a traditional musical idiom can enrich and expand its expressive power while respecting the taste and sensibility passed down from master musicians of the past.
The classical music tradition of the Afghan rubâb is a hybrid creation whose sources lie to the east, north, and west of present-day Afghanistan, in the great historical empires of Persia, Central Asia, and India. The rubâb itself is of Central Asian origin. The style and repertoire of the raga music performed on it is rooted in North India, but also has strong links to Iran. The tabla, the pair of drums that accompany the rubâb and express the music’s sophisticated rhythmic element, is indisputably Indian, but its creators seem to have drawn inspiration from older forms of Central and West Asian kettle and goblet drums. Finally, Homayun’s performance style has been shaped not only by the musical traditions to which Afghan music is geographically and historically linked, but by his lively interest in contemporary music from around the world.
Homayun Sakhi was born in Kabul in 1976 into one of Afghanistan's leading musical families. From the age of ten, he studied rubâb with his father, Ghulam Sakhi, in the traditional form of apprenticeship known as ustâd-shâgird (Persian: “master-apprentice”). Ghulam Sakhi was the heir to a musical lineage that began in the 1860s, when the ruler of Kabul, Amir Sher Ali Khan, brought a number of classically trained musicians from India to perform at his court. Over the next hundred years, Indian musicians thrived there, and Kabul became a provincial center for the performance of North Indian classical music. Musicians in Kabul also cultivated the art of playing the rubâb, which was prominent in regional folk music. Today the rubâb is regarded with great pride by the people of Afghanistan as their national instrument.
Homayun’s study of the rubâb was interrupted in 1992, when his entire family moved to the Pakistani city of Peshawar, a place of refuge for many Afghans from the political chaos and violence that enveloped their country in the years following the Soviet invasion of 1979. In Peshawar, Homayun quickly became a popular entertainer. After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, many Afghan musicians in Peshawar returned to Kabul. By this time, however, Homayun was on his way to Fremont, California, which claims the largest concentration of Afghans in the United States. Afghans flocked to Fremont and nearby Hayward and Union City in the 1980s, joining an older community of émigrés from the Asian subcontinent. In Fremont, just as in Peshawar, Homayun quickly established himself as a leader of the local musical community. He opened a school to teach Afghan music to children, recorded compact discs of popular Afghan songs, and became a sought-after performer. At the same time, he maintains an active performance schedule that takes him to cities around the world.
Born in Germany in 1981, Salar Nader is one of his generation’s leading performers on the tabla. A disciple of the great tabla master Zakir Hussein, Salar Nader resides in the Bay Area. An accomplished solo artists, he frequently accompanies Homayun Sakhi as well as other performers of Afghan and North Indian classical music.
A Note about Raga
In Indian classical music, melody is organized according to the principles of raga. Raga is an abstract musical structure that provides performers with the key information necessary for its exposition and development in a performance. This musical structure is typically linked to extramusical associations that may include the time of day when a raga should be performed, and the particular mood, feeling, or emotional color that a raga is believed to personify.
In Afghan music, raga is presented in the form of a classical instrumental piece often called naghma-ye klasik in Dari (Afghan Persian). Performance versions of such pieces are typically 10-15 minutes in length, but Homayun and Salar’s expansive development of both melodic and rhythmic elements of the naghma creates a longer work. Homayun’s exposition of the naghma begins with an extended introductory section (shakl) in which he explores the core pitches, intervals, and characteristic melodic motifs of the raga. Shakl is analogous to the improvised âlâp of Indian classical music, and, as in âlâp, the initial part is extemporized in free rhythm. Later, a strong rhythmic pulse and pattern emerge within the melodic framework, analogous to the jor and jâlâ performed on North Indian stringed instruments such as the sitar and sarod.
This program was presented in collaboration with the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia (AKMICA), a program of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
Among the traditional arts of Central Asia, music occupies a unique place. It has been at once a means of expressing social identity, preserving spiritual practices and beliefs, and transmitting history, philosophy and ethics. The Aga Khan Music Initiative was created in 2000 by His Highness the Aga Khan to support Central Asian musicians and communities to sustain, further develop and pass on musical traditions that are a vital part of their cultural heritage. The Music Initiative supports outstanding musical talent, cultivates new approaches to musical performance and stimulates interest in Central Asian music worldwide. Notable AKMICA projects range from a collaboration with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project to an ongoing partnership with the Smithsonian Institution for the production of Music of Central Asia, a 10-volume CD-DVD series released on the Smithsonian Folkways label, and a world-wide Performance and Outreach program.
