The rubab — Afghanistan's national instrument
The short-necked lute at the centre of Afghan music. How it is built, how it sounds, and the players who defined it.
If one sound signals Afghan music immediately, it is the rubab — a bright, slightly nasal, percussive attack with a shimmer behind it that no other instrument quite produces.
What it is
The rubab is a short-necked lute, carved from a single block of mulberry wood. The body is hollowed out and the lower chamber covered with stretched goatskin, which is what gives it the dry, drum-like edge on the attack.
The strings are the reason it rings. Three main playing strings are joined by drone strings and — the important part — a set of sympathetic strings running beneath, which are never plucked. They vibrate on their own when the played strings sound. Count varies by instrument; around eighteen strings in total is typical. That sympathetic ring is the halo you hear around every note, and it is why a recording of a solo rubab sounds fuller than one instrument should.
It is played with a plectrum, traditionally of bone or horn.
Where it sits
The rubab's influence runs further than Afghanistan. It is generally accepted as an ancestor of the sarod, one of the principal instruments of Hindustani classical music — a reminder that the musical traffic between Kabul and the Indian subcontinent went in both directions and was continuous for centuries.
Within Afghanistan it is both a classical and a folk instrument. It carries melody in the classical ensemble, drives the rhythm in attan, and turns up in popular recording throughout the catalogue.
The players
Ustad Mohammad Omar (1905–1980) is the name to know. Born in Kabul, he was the pre-eminent rubab player of the twentieth century and directed the national orchestra at Radio Afghanistan. His recordings, and the 1974 American tour that produced some of the best of them, are the reference point for what the instrument can do.
The instrument has continued through teaching lineages as much as recordings — the ustad–student relationship, where a player studies for years under one master, is how this music is transmitted, and it is also why disruption to musical life in Afghanistan does more damage than a lost archive would. An unrecorded repertoire lives in the people who know it.
Listening for it
The rubab is easier to hear once you know what to listen for: the attack is percussive, almost snapped, and the note decays into a ring that doesn't match the attack. On older recordings it often sits slightly forward in the mix.
Start with the classical and folk material in the Sandar catalogue, and with the Pashto recordings where it tends to be most prominent. Radio Azadi's music programmes also feature it regularly.
Artists mentioned
Ustad Sarahang · Ustad Mahwash