Sun 10/6 @ 7:30PM
While most of the news about contemporary Afghanistan has been depressing, the country also has a rich cultural history that seldom makes it into current events stories.
That includes its music which blends influences from India, central Asia and Persia (Iran), the cultures that surround it. Its national instrument is the lute-like 18-string rubâb, the instrument played by renowned virtuoso Homayoun Sakhi, who learned from his equally virtuoso father — such familial lineage is typical of traditional music cultures. Sadly, Homayoun and his family left their native land in 1992 following the Soviet war to settle first in Pakistan and then in Fremont, California which has the U.S.’s largest Afghan community. Happily, this means the opportunity to share his native music more widely, as a performer, composer and educator.
Homayoun will be sharing it this week at Oberlin College’s Finney Chapel where he’ll be joined onstage by tabla musician Salar Nader whose journey is similar. His Afghan parents fled Afghanistan, moving to German where he was born and then to the San Francisco Bay area when he was five. He began studying the traditional northern Indian drums seriously at the age of 7 and like Homayoun, absorbed influences from Afghanistan, Indian, Pakistan and Iran as well as American jazz. He’s been performing professionally since he was 12 and has been working with Homayoun for almost 30 years.
The concert is free.
oberlin/art-afghan-rubab-and-tabla
Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074