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.
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