Ed note: Did you hear yesterday’s NPR program or see today’s NY Times about the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registrar? Well, it’s not hard to believe, but Lorraine’s Afghan Music field recordings from 1966-67 and 1971-73 made it on the list! Congratulations Lorraine!
Courtesy: Hiromi Lorraine Sakata
This collection of over 50 hours of important and unique field recordings from Afghanistan was the research of ethnomusicologist Hiromi Lorraine Sakata. Sakata first researched in Afghanistan in 1966-67 and captured 25 hours of recordings of singers and instrumentalists from the provinces of Kabul, Khandahar, Urozgan, Nangarhar, Herat, Balkh and Nuristan. Her second trip, from 1971 to 1973, resulted in 26 additional hours of recordings from Herat, Kabul, Badakhshan, Hazarajat and Kandahar. As she wrote in her book “Music in the Mind: The Concepts of Music and Musician in Afghanistan” (2002), these recordings document a time and place that are now completely gone. Invasion, civil war and social upheaval have disrupted and, in some cases, destroyed the musical life she documented between 1966 and 1973. Sakata, a well-known expert in the music of Afghanistan, taught at the University of Washington and the University of California (Los Angeles) for decades. These important recordings are now deposited at the Ethnomusicology Archives at the University of Washington.
Listen (MP3)
Hi
I am a Hazara man from Afghanistan. I am very interested in studying and working on finding Old music belonging to long gone villages of Afghanistan. I am interested to know of how can I get the musical recordings? — important to add I have zero intention of making money out of recordings. The recordings are part of our long gone music identity.
Sincerely
Atiq Lotan