Finding a voice

It’s one of the most haunting sounds I’ve ever heard — the plangent wail of a female Sufi singer from Afghanistan.

It’s one of the most haunting sounds I’ve ever heard — the plangent wail of a female Sufi singer from Afghanistan. Her song, ‘Gar konad saheb-e-man’, which translates as ‘If my eyes meet the eyes of the Lord’, was filled with religious longing for the divine; austere and otherworldly, yet also deeply persuasive, engaging, absorbing, taking over the mind. You can hear it on World Routes (Radio 3, today, Saturday), presented by Lucy Duran (and produced by Peter Meanwell).

Mahwash is the name of the singer; her song one of the unaccompanied devotional songs that emerged out of the repressive regime of the Taleban. They would not allow music-making of any kind, destroying all instruments and punishing anyone who was discovered listening to music on radio or cassette. It was considered unIslamic, a distraction from the worship of Allah. You can never, though, stop a whole nation of people from singing. The songs of Mahwash are sublime, uplifting, fuelled by desperation and resonating now with the story of what’s been going on in the cities of Herat and Kabul. It’s extraordinary that something which sounds so strange to those of us who come from the West is yet somehow so tangible, reaching out to be heard and received. It’s also cheering that such beauty and truth could have survived in a country decimated by war for so many decades.

Afghanistan, though, has a rich musical heritage, bringing together three very different cultures — Persian, Indian and Central Asian — to forge a very individual tradition. The instruments are complex, many-stringed and created with superb craftsmanship, often inlaid with precious mother-of-pearl and decorated with flower and bird motifs.