Jeremy vs. World Folk Music: Afghanistan

I like to think of myself as a lover of music.  In particular I have always had an affinity for traditional/folk music. Up to this point when I think of the term "folk music" my mind immediately jumps to American or Irish folk music.  Recently I heard a traditional southern Indian folk song and I felt myself so moved by it that I decided that it was time to broaden my scope a bit and take a trip into the realm of folk music of other cultures.  I'm not a music scholar so I won't pretend to offer any real insight into the music, but I will try to offer up the more interesting bits of trivia that I find along the way.

I decided to start my journey into world folk music by simply opening a list of the countries of the world and going through them alphabetically.  The first country on the list is Afghanistan...

Searching through YouTube for examples I've found that Afghanistan has an amazingly rich musical heritage and thankfully, now that the Taliban have been thrown out of power this rich heritage is making a flourishing return...

As with most other traditional songs in other cultures, the primary function of a song like the one above is to tell a story and though we cannot understand the words the emotion clearly comes through.  Here is another one...

I could just close my eyes and listen to this stuff all day... 

If you want to read more about the traditional music of Afghanistan check out this article on Wikipedia... 

Music of Afghanistan

Next stop... Albania