Hamidullah Charikari - Afghan Music - Cassette from Afghanistan

Cover of the original cassette.

Here another beautiful cassette by Hamidullah Charikari. This is the fourth one we post. Our friend KF made years ago a CD with nice covers out of the cassette. Many thanks to him.
At the beginning and at the end of the cassette the music is for about one or two minutes slightly distorted.

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Ismail and Hamidullah - Folk Music from Afghanistan - From an Afghani Cassette

Cover of the original cassette.

Here another very beautiful cassette from pre-Taliban times by the great Hamidullah Charikari together with his older brother Ismail. I'm not sure if they are really brothers or just come both from Chakri near Kabul. We posted in 2011 already two cassettes by Hamidullah, together with the great Bilton.

I still don't know if it is proper to name this music Logari Music. In 2013 we posted a cassette by Ustad Doray Logari, who is said to have brought Logari music to Kabul and was recorded a lot by the radio back then. This is the way, one says, how Logari music became popular over all of Afghanistan. He was called the father of Logari music. It is also said that Ustad Doray Logari was the main teacher of Bilton, the most famous singer of this tradition, though there exists also the information that his teacher was Salam Logari, the son of Ustad Doray Logari. But as they are both more or less of the same age, or Bilton is even older than Salam Logari, as I think, I doubt this. Bilton was raised and spend most of his life in the Logar Valley. The music of the two singers here is definitely of the same tradtion, though these two musicians are not from Logar. It could be that the music which Ustad Doray brought to Kabul had such an effect that a new, quite sophisticated Afghan folk music evolved out of it. There are many other singers widely known in Afghanistan who sing and play a similar music, like Zaman Shawqi, Haji Saifuddin (whose music is clearly named "Logari music") and younger ones like Faiz Karizi (born 1953). If anybody can help to clarify this subject, it would be very appreciated. What I found in the literature - I must confess that I have only very few books on Afghan music - doesn't really answer my questions. As so often, what is described in the books and what one can hear in recordings doesn't fit always together. 

Anyway, this is a very fine and very fascinating folk music tradition performed by excellent professional musicians and it was and still seems to be today very popular in Afghanistan and the Afghan community in the West. Though in Afghanistan and in the West traditional Afghan music seems to be completly neglected nowadays as far as available recordings are concerned. When I started to look for Afghan recordings (CDs and cassettes) in the Afghan shops in Germany, especially in Hamburg, there were still a lot of recordings of traditional music available. That was in the 1980s and early and mid 1990s. But already about 10 years later this music had vanished completely from the shelfs of the shops.

In the West never a CD was published by a Western label by any of these singers and musicians. I think this is one of the big missed chances. Now it is too late for well-known reasons. In a recording done in the West one could have insisted on leaving out the Harmonium, about which the Afghan music specialist John Baily already complained several times. Then one would have had a beautiful recording of good singing with an ensemble of Rabab, Tambur, Sarinda and Dhol. The interaction between the musicians is always fascinating.

Our friend KF made years ago a CD out of this cassette and created the covers. Many thanks to him.

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Afghanistan - Music from Kabul - LP released in the US in 1973

Here another Afghanistan LP contributed by our friend Werner Durand: this time music from Kabul with some very beautiful instrumental pieces and some with vocals. Many thanks to Werner.

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Folk Music of Afghanistan - Vol. 2 - LP released in the US in the early 1970s

Here Vol. 2, also a contribution by our friend Werner Durand. Many thanks to him. It contains more fieldrecordings of authentic folk music (Mahali) of different regions of Afghanistan. It leaves out the urban music of Kabul.

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Folk Music of Afghanistan - Vol. 1 - LP released in the US in 1971

This LP is a contribution by our friend Werner Durand. Many thanks to him. It contains fieldrecordings of authentic folk music (Mahali) of different regions of Afghanistan. It leaves out the urban music of Kabul.

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Afghanistan - A Musical Anthology of the Orient 3 - Unesco Collection - LP released in Germany in the early 1960s

Here we post an early LP devoted to the music of Afghanistan. This is perhaps the most beautiful anthology of Afghan music ever published, because of its musical quality and the variety it offers.

It was one of the few LPs which were republished on CD by Rounder Records in 2003, in a project to republish the complete Unesco Series, published originally by Bärenreiter in Germany as LPs. Unfortunately, this project was abandoned already after a few CD releases, probably because it did not pay off financially. This CD is no longer available for many years.

One should not take the comments of Alain Daniélou too seriously: they seem a bit too farfetched at times.

We scanned here only the English part of the comments.
This is the first of a series of about ten posts on Afghani music, insha'Allah. At the end of this series we will provide, with some posts by Ustad Sarahang, a bridge to the Raga music of Pakistan and India.

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In the order of the tracks is a mistake: track 11 in the download is track 12 of the LP and track 12 is track 11. Sorry.

Edalat (Adalat) Nasibov - Ashiq from Azerbaijan - A private cassette from a private concert

Before proceeding to Afghanistan on our journey towards Pakistan and India, we post one more cassette by Edalat Nasibov, the brilliant Ashiq from Azerbaijan. I just discovered it a couple of days ago in my collection. So in order to complete our posts on Edalat Nasibov here it is. 

I vaguely remember that I received this cassette in the early 1990s from an Iranian musician and owner of a gallery for old nomadic carpets in Cologne, Germany. 

My friend KF made many years ago a CD out of this cassette and created nice covers. 

Many thanks to both.

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Musiqi-e Milal-e Musalman - Music of the Islamic People: India, Pakistan, Tajikistan and the Republic of Azerbaijan - A box of six cassettes released in Iran in 1996

On the 9th of August 2018 we posted two cassettes out of this box. Now we have the complete box again and decided, to post it. The post of 9th of August we have deleted.

This box was published by the same organization as the series of 18 albums "Local Iranian Music", each containing six cassettes, from which we posted up to now only the volume on Baluchestan. We plan to post in the future some of the volumes on Khorasan.

The box consists of these volumes:

Vol. 1: Ustad Bismillah Khan - India

Vol. 2: Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Pakistan

Vol. 3: Adina Hashemov - Tajikistan

Vol. 4 & 5: Davlatmand Kholov - Tajikistan

Vol. 6: Alim Qasimov - Azerbaijan

There is a booklet with the set, but unfortunately only in Farsi.

Vol. 1: Ustad Bismillah Khan - India

Bismillah Khan needs no introductions as he is one of the most popular classical Indian musicians with a very long carrier and countless LP and CD releases.

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Vol. 2: Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Pakistan

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan also doesn't need any introduction being worldwide the most widely known traditional artist from the Orient and Asia. There are around 200 CD releases by him.

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Vol. 3: Adina Hashemov - Tajikistan

Adina Hashemov is in the west hardly known at all, but in Tajikistan he is one the most popular folk music singers. The only release in the west is to my knowledge a 21 minutes long track on a CD published by the Belgian label Fonti Musicali: Tadjikistan - Musiques Populaires du Sud (1991).

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Vol. 4: Davlatmand Kholov - Tajikistan (1)

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Vol. 5: Davlatmand Kholov - Tajikistan (2)

Davlatmand Kholov is a well known and in Tajikistan very popular artist, who created a new national, so called "classical" music, based on the music of Badakhshan. His goal was to replace the real classical music which is the Shashmaqam and the Maqam of the Ferghana Valley and which are in Tajikistan the same as the ones performed in Uzbekistan, the only difference being that in Tajikistan the poems are in Tajik (Persian). But Davlatmands music is still folk music and can't compare with the real classical Maqam music in its refinement and greatness. See our many posts on Shashmaqam and the Maqam tradition of the Ferghana Valley.  

There are three CDs by Davlatmand, one by the French label Inedit, another, more recent one by the Russian label Long Arms Records and a double CD on the Iranian label Barbat, performing together with some Iranian musicians.

For more information on the artist, see the booklet to the CD published in France.

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Vol. 6:Alim Qasimov - Azerbaijan

Alim Qasimov again is a widely known traditional artist who toured a lot in the west and has quite a number of CD releases published in France, Germany and the US. He is considered one of the greatest voices in the world. We had only few posts with him up to now. Here he is accompanied by Malik Mansurov on Tar and Elshan Mansurov on Kemenche.

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Cassettes 3 to 5 were digitized by our friend KF years ago. That is the reason why these cassettes have track divisions. Many thanks to KF.