“A s a Pakistani denizen it is a great moment of pride for me to play my role in boosting soft image of my beloved country through my musical instrument rabab,” says young rabab maestro Gulab Khel Afridi, who garnered a widespread fame for being a skillful instrumentalist and represented Pakistan in over 20 countries.

The young rabab player has performed with popular Urdu and Pashto singers including Humaira Channa, Hamid Ali Khan, Shabnam Majeed, Taj Mastani, Khayal Mohammad, Shah Wali, Gulzar Alam and many others. Besides Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata, he has participated in musical concerts in Lahore, Karachi, Quetta, Islamabad and Multan.

“I have the honour of performing in front of former presidents Pervez Musharraf and Asif Ali Zardari and former prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. I have 10 solo rabab albums to my credit,” Mr Afridi said proudly.

Born in 1977 at Bara Qadeem, Peshawar he began his music career at tender age of 12 by learning of harmonium but his spiritual guide advised him to learn rabab playing and his advice did miracle.

Mr Afridi became a perfect ustad in a short span of time. Last year he performed in front of 14 heads of Islamic states in Turkmenistan. Also, he has planned to participate in a Pashto cultural festival in Germany to be held in December this year.

“Despite the arrival of many electronic musical instruments, rabab will continue to rule over the hearts of Pakhtuns. In remote areas of Pakhtun dwellings, rabab still occupies its prominent place at their hujras and is played at night to drive away their daylong fatigue,” he said, pleading for preservation of the traditional Pashto musical instrument.

Mr Afridi said that Rabab was considered the king of other musical instruments by Pakhtuns because of its heart-throbbing sound and its electrifying effect on the listeners.

Rabab is associated with renowned Sufi poet Rahman Baba, who is said to have composed poetry while sitting on the bank of Bara River. It also occupies a prominent place in the famous Pashto romantic folk tale -- Adam Khan Durkhani -- where Durkhani is captivated by the spell-binding skill of rabab playing of Adam Khan at his hujra.

In good old days Pakhtuns’ typical hujra would never be completed without rabab and mungay (pitcher used as drum). Rabab is divided into four parts, namely its head, neck, abdomen and face. The price of rabab varies from Rs150,000 to 300,000 depending on the quality of Toot (mulberry) tree from which it is made.

Embroidery work is done just for the sake of decoration. Its making now is a fading art in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. However, lovers of traditional music still cherish rabab playing and listening.

Talking about the structure of rabab, Mr Afridi said that it had four tunes (Purday) and three strings (Taroona) and carried some 20 small additional strings (Seemoona) just to balance its echo.

“It is associated with Sufi saints but I think it is wrong to say that anyone who visits shrine of Rahman Baba will learn rabab. Also it is a wrong notion that rabab can be played well at some particular times. It needs only one's internal urge and his set mood,” he said.

To a query that some people assume that rabab might actually be the ancestor of the Western European violin, he replied in negative. He also rejected the notion that rabab was originated and related to Thil -- an Egyptian musical instrument.

“Every time you need to retune rabab because its strings get loosened when it is kept unused, also it is likened to an annoying and stubborn child. Sometimes the audience gets bored with this attitude of their favourite musical instrument but it takes lot of time to tune rabab and get it balanced with other musical instruments,” Mr Afridi observed.

The decoration materials include ivory, bones of animals (camel) and buffalo's horns, shells and plastic. Its strings are of different thickness. Out of six, three are of plastic called Zeer, Bum and

Katey (high, middle and low), the other three are called Shahatar. The total number of strings counts 15.

The striker of strings is called Mizraab, made of buffalo or camel's bone. “The making of rabab used to be professionally done in Kandahar, Kabul, Herat, Peshawar, Mardan and Swabi. Late Samandar Khan in Peshawar Dabgari Bazaar was awarded the Pride of Performance on March 23, 1991 for his excellent rabab making.

His legacy is carried on by his son Mushtaq Hussain and grandson Wilayat Khan,” the rabab player explained.

He said that in a Pashto folk tale Durkhanai fell in love with Adam Khan because he was a great rabab player and one day when he was playing rabab at a wedding ceremony of one of his friends’ hujra, she heard its soothing sound and scaled her home's wall to have a glimpse of its player, who was no one but the young and handsome Adam Khan. “May be true or untrue but this thing also contributed a lot to its mass popularity among Pakhtuns,” Mr Afridi said.

He said that in his view only Khayal Mohammad knew the basics of Pashto music. “The youngsters should get a proper training in traditional Pashto music. Most young singers are unaware of the enchanting flavour of our traditional music,” he regretted.

The rabab maestro appealed to provincial culture department to make efforts for preservation of the traditional Pashto musical instruments including rabab.

He complained that the state-run TV and radio channels ignored instrumentalists in annual awards. “There is no category for the instrumentalists in PTV. If this is done, artists can be benefited from the policy,” he hoped.

Mr Afridi said that there were only about 60 professional rabab players in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata while the number of amateurs may run in thousands. “I teach rabab playing to about 300 rabab lovers. They include people from the USA, UK, and Germany. To foreigners, I teach rabab intricacies through online sessions. In Spairsang near Warsak Road, about 30 and in Peshawar only three to four rabab makers are in the business,” Mr Afridi said.