Mohammad Omar (musician)

Mohammad Omar ( Pashto : محمد عمر, * 1905 in Kabul ; † 1980 ibid) was an Afghan musician from the old town of Kabul, Charabat .

Life

Ustād Mohammad Omar did not come from any traditional musical family. He began as an amateur musician after training in North Indian classical singing with Ustad Qasem. He was a member of the music group founded by Ghulam Hossein when Radio Afghanistan was founded. After Ustad Ghulam Hossein's retirement in the 1950s, he became director of Radio Afghanistan’s traditional musical instrument orchestra, now RTA .

Mohammad Omar's virtuosity lay mainly in the music genre Naghma , a kind of song without singing. In this song he played the same melody with varied tonal highs and lows with different temporal speed. He produced many tones of other musical instruments on the rubab , almost as many as on the guitar.

The tonal music patterns of the smallest variation of the simplest sounds and from slow speed to the maximum of the tonal and temporal variations of the sounds he produced very easily.

The repetitions may seem boring when you first hear them, but when you listen more closely, the sounds are colorful, varied and even slightly changed. Ustad Omar inserted interruptions of varying lengths when playing the rub, i.e. intermezzi that brought the drama in the game to the fore and enabled the audience to reflect.

Tabla and / or zerbaghali are the usual instruments that accompany the rubab; They are silent as long as the rubabler gradually introduces the audience to the topic and the so-called conversation begins with the sudden participation of the tabla. The instruments are necessary for the conversation and the dispute . Rubab is also silent to let the tabla sound. Rubab becomes a percussion instrument itself. Observers and listeners hardly distinguish whether the strings are struck or torn here.

Actually, the music in Afghanistan is more lyrical and unanimous, but here only the musical instruments communicate and argue with each other or against each other, a kind of competition that gives the sound a theatrical nuance. The sound not only consists of conflict and tension, but also exudes hope and confidence. Topics are also dealt with musically that also appear in the lyrics of the music, such as Minna or Escheq (love) or Ghayrat (honor), Shojahat (bravery) etc.

Rubab and tabla try to get closer to each other at the beginning of a piece of music, as if they were strangers, sometimes the impression cannot be denied that they are in love, very tenderly and lovingly. Then the conflicts are discussed; they compete and fight against each other, the tension is great, every now and then the tabla gets the upper hand and Rubab is silent and after the main piece and climax at the end the so-called happy ending. Metaphors that symbolize the tragic tradition of the conflicts in Afghanistan. What cannot be verbalized can be expressed through the sounds of music.

Mohammad Omar also played motifs from the traditional schools of Patiala and Bhopal . This music has been heavily influenced by the successors of the Herater Timurid dynasty. The Indian music experienced in the Mughal Empire one of its highlights. That is why one of his pieces of music is called Shaghal and Naghma , a motif from Panj Ketab as the Panchatantra - "five books" is called in Afghanistan - which the Mughal dynasty translated from Sanskrit into Dari , into the written Persian language.

In 1974 and 1975 he gave a concert in the Meany Hall for the Performing Arts of the Department of Ethnomusicology at the Seattle University of Washington . Zakir Hossein accompanied the Rubabmeister there as a tabla player on November 18, 1974.

With Mohammad Omar, the motifs from traditional folk music were not neglected. His openness and love for western modern music is reflected in his joint concerts with young western musicians, such as his concert with the Munich music group Embryo in 1978, which Werner Penzel recorded as part of the documentation Vagabunden Karawane .

Mohammad Omar thrilled the young generation with his music. Players from other countries, such as Larry Porter , have received ruba lessons from him. Rubab is an instrument with a double body, which is covered with a goat skin and, like the sitar, has between 19 and 21 strings.

The instrument is played in all provinces by all ethnic, religious and linguistic groups throughout Afghanistan. The Rubab can be understood as a symbol of the cohesion of all peoples and tribes in Afghanistan.

Mohammad Omar's students include, among others

• Siar Habibi , Kabul rubbing player
• Aziz Herawi from Herat
• Daud Khan Sadozai
• Homayun Sakhi
• Amir Hamza Pakistani from Pakistan
• Kuljit Singh
• Abdullah Kadiri
• Larry Porter

Discography (selection)

• Embryo's journey. 1980 (Snowball 20)
• Virtuoso from Afghanistan. 2002 (SFW 40439)
• The soul of sound. Music from Afghanistan. 2009 (Academy Of Indian Music)

literature

• John Baily : Music of Afghanistan: Professional Musicians in the City of Herat. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988

Web links

• Ostad Daud Khan Sadozai
• Aziz Herawi
• embryo

credentials

1. ↑ If you play the wrong way, it can easily happen that the strings have to be retuned. The pegs of the Rubab are made from the wood of the mulberry tree in a simple way. There are also rubab instruments with modern vertebrae are equipped of metal.
2. ↑ Jackal is a figure of the Panchatantra . The 15th century edition published by Timurids in Herat goes back to von Rudaki , who wrote the material in bound language (verse form). Have the translation from the Q original language Panchatantra translated from Sanskrit into Persian in the 16th century.
3. ↑ meany hall ( Memento of the original from January 30, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ 1974-75 Mohammad Omarrabab ( Memento of the original dated August 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Phoneme [u] in Rubab has been Americanized. 
5. ^ Werner Penzel: Vagabunden Karawane: A musical trip through Iran, Afghanistan and India in 1979. Retrieved on August 18, 2017 .