Great Lakes Folk Festival - Programs & Activities - Music & Dance

Programs & Activities
Music & Dance

Aziz Herawi
Sacremento, California
Afghani Lute Music

Aziz Herawi

Aziz Herawi was 7, living in his hometown of Herat, located in western Afghanistan, the first time he heard the strings of the dutar being plucked. But he had a problem. His father, born to a well-to-do family of mullahs, or religious clerics, was extremely conservative and allowed his children to listen to news on the radio but turned it off before music was broadcast. Young Aziz talked one of the family servants into buying the long-necked, 14-stringed instrument for him from a shepherd. The boy would wait until his father was asleep, then sneak into the woods surrounding their home. Alone, in the dark, he practiced, teaching himself to play. Aziz was still a young man when his father died and only then was he able to openly pursue his passion.

While still in his 20's, Herawi became a well-known performer in Afghanistan. Traditionally, music accompanied nearly every private and public ceremony, with the exception of funerals. Herawi played before the king, Zaher Shah, with pop artist Ahmad Zahir, and went on the road to Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey, and other Central Asian nations. His career in Afghanistan came to an abrupt halt in 1979 when the Soviets bombed Herat and troops arrived to round up local leaders. Herawi was away at the time, practicing with musician friends, but most of his family was killed.

During those grim and desperate times of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Herawi lived in the mountains with the moujahadeen. He did not play or even hear much music for more than five years. As things worsened in his homeland, Herawi fled to Pakistan in 1983 and two years later settled into the growing Afghani expatriate community in Northern California.

Traditional music from the Herat region blends Persian and Hindustani instruments and styles. The pieces have the varied rhythms of the Hindustani raga forms, but are fairly short (3 to 5 minutes each) and more intense than much Hindustani music. In addition, their melodies are based on the even-tempered12-tone octave that in recent decades has overtaken the traditional Persian system of microtonal variations. In addition to the dutar, Herawi also play the rubab or rebab, a 24-stringed, short-necked lute.

As an international troubadour of Afghani music, Herawi has himself become part of an emerging class of expatriate Afghani artists devoted to the survival and promotion of a new Afghani national musical culture in a world of changing social and economic values. At the 2004 Great Lakes Folk Festival Herawi is accompanied by Niloufar Talebi, a Herati-style dancer.

Links
http://www.seveneighths.com/aziz_herawi.htm?
http://www.dancesilkroad.org/New%20pages/bio_aziz_nw.html