This film is about the sound of the rubab, the short-necked lute often called ‘the lion of instruments’. Viewers see how it is played, the musician seated and holding it across the body, plucking the strings with a small wooden plectrum, and hear what makes it distinctive: melody strings, long drones and up to fifteen sympathetic strings that ring in response to every note.
The rubab is also a craft. In Kabul’s Shor Bazaar, close to Kharabat Street, where Amir Sher Ali Khan settled musicians and instrument makers in the 19th century, families of makers still carve the body from heavy mulberry wood, stretch goatskin over the larger chamber and inlay mother-of-pearl. From folk song to the raga-based art music of Kabul, the rubab carries the melody at the heart of Afghan music.
