The rabab, the attan and Pashtun music

An instrument at the heart of Pashtun music

The rabab, also spelled rubab (رباب), is a plucked string instrument. UNESCO describes it as one of the oldest musical instruments in Central, South and Southwest Asia, and as a unifying factor among the peoples of Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is also played widely among Pashtuns in north-western Pakistan. [1] [3]

The rabab has a central place in Pashtun music. An AFP report published by Dawn in 2020 described Pashtun music as built around the rabab, played to the beat of the tabla drums, with songs about unrequited love or calls for political change. [3]

How a rabab is made

A rabab is carved rather than assembled. An Afghan example in the collection of the Koizumi Fumio Memorial Archives at Tokyo University of the Arts shows the usual design: the boat-shaped body and short neck are cut from a single piece of mulberry wood, about 80 centimetres long. Goat hide covers the lower half of the body, and a wooden board covers the upper part. [2]

The same instrument has three melody strings, two drone strings, thirteen sympathetic strings and four frets tied around the neck. The melody and drone strings pass over the bridge. The sympathetic strings run beneath it to tuning pegs on the side of the body. The player sits cross-legged, holds the instrument horizontally and plucks it with a small wooden plectrum. The archive notes that the rabab is used in both folk and classical music. [2]

UNESCO describes rabab making as a skill that combines carpentry, woodcarving, marquetry and inlay, usually learned by hands-on practice and often passed down within families. [1]

UNESCO recognition in 2024

In 2024 UNESCO inscribed the 'Art of crafting and playing rubab/rabab' on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The decision was taken at the nineteenth session of the Intergovernmental Committee, on a joint nomination from Afghanistan, Iran, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Pakistan was not among the submitting states. [1]

The inscription notes that the rabab is played at celebrations, weddings, funerals, gatherings and ritual healing, and in orchestral and contemporary music. Master players are respected as elders of their communities. Rabab makers are mostly men, but players include people of both sexes and of every age, ethnicity and religious background. [1]

Sung poetry: the landay or tappa

Much Pashtun singing is built on short poems. The best-known folk form is the landay (لنډۍ), also called misray or tappa. The Encyclopaedia Iranica's article on Iranian folk poetry notes that it consists of a single couplet, and that in performance several short texts may be sung or recited one after another. [5]

Pashto folk poetry is more broadly marked by strict syllable-counting metres and, in its lyrical forms, by complex rhyme schemes. The same article records Pashto songs for weddings, lullabies and laments for the dead, and notes that in recent decades audio cassettes have carried Pashto popular poetry to large audiences. [5]

The attan dance

The attan (اتڼ) is the best-known Pashtun dance. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Radio Mashaal describes it as having originated as a war dance among the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Today it is often performed at weddings and other celebrations, and some tribal communities still use it to rally their members, especially the young, in the face of threats. [4]

The dance is typically performed in a circle around a musician beating a double-headed barrel drum. Radio Mashaal's recording of an attan performance in North Waziristan, made in August 2013, shows the form as it is still danced in the region. [4]

Disruption and revival

Pashtun music has faced severe pressure in recent decades. The 2020 AFP report describes how, during the years of militant violence in north-western Pakistan, artists and singers were attacked and threatened, CD markets were bombed, instrument shops were destroyed and public performances stopped. The singer Gulzar Alam, who was attacked several times, left the country. [3]

The same report describes a revival after the military intensified operations against militants from 2014 and security improved: performances returned, instrument shops reopened and broadcasters began featuring new Pashto singers. A rabab player and member of the National Assembly from Swat, Haider Ali Khan, told AFP that Pashtuns love both their religion and their traditional music. The village elder and poet Farman Ali Shah called music the spice of life. [3]