Search - Various Artists :: Afghanistan Untouched

Another excellent release from Afghanistan

Pharoah S. Wail | Inner Space | 01/28/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is a great 2-disc set of field-recordings from 1968. Represented in this set are the musics of Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Pashtun, Herati, Kazakh, and Turkmen peoples.



There is a very nice sampling of styles and instruments, from lutes such as the dutar, tanbur, dambura, and dombra, to the sonorous bowed ghichak, to percussion and vocal styles.



There are a few tracks here from the brilliant ghichak player Baba Naim, who is one of the main musicians featured on the great Inside Afghanistan cd I reviewed some time ago. As well as a few tracks with the great zirbaghali (a drum) player Melang Nejrabi (or Malang Nejrovi, seen it both ways), who is also on Inside Afghanistan. Don't take this to mean that if you have one of these you don't need the other, though. Aside from the few tracks with these 2 (which are not tracks that are repeated on Inside Afghanistan, as these recordings were recorded by different people in different years) there is no overlap of musicians on these 2 cds.



This is one of my favorite cds I bought in 2003. This really is a snapshot into a world that may never exist again. It shows a musically vibrant Afghanistan, before the Soviets, war, and the Taliban would bring nothing but pain and silence. One of my favorite tracks features 2 female Uzbek wedding singers. They have great voices and I love the song. This track always gets me. In my lifetime, the attempts were made to turn women into ghosts. Acknowledged only when it was physically convenient for men. It's a great thing to be able to hear the voices of 2 Afghan women from a time when they were still seen and heard.



I meant to keep the shrink-wrap when I bought this cd because there was a sticker on it saying that $1 from the purchase of every Afghanistan Untouched cd goes to...(and now I can't remember the organization because somehow I lost the shrink-wrap)... an organization helping to rebuild Afghanistan. So, besides the excellent and historically important music contained in this set, some of the money also goes to a great cause."