Afghan music collector fears for cassette legacy as Pakistan intensifies deportations
PESHAWAR: A faint Pashto melody drifts through the dense alleyways of Board Bazaar in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, growing clearer as one leaves behind the clatter of shopkeepers and motorbikes.
At the far end of a narrow five-foot lane in this neighborhood long known as Mini Kabul, the song becomes distinct: Afghan folk tales echoing from an old cassette player inside a mud-brick shop with wooden gates flung wide.
Inside, shelves are stacked with hundreds of cassette tapes, some cracked, others faded, alongside battered televisions and radios that fill every corner. Bent over an old radio under the glow of a small lamp is Muhammad Hassan, known locally as Azmari, or “tiger” in Pashto. The 50-year-old Afghan refugee has spent thirty-five years collecting and repairing what may be one of Pakistan’s largest archives of Afghan folk music.
In the small shop he rents, Hassan has preserved around 2,000 master cassettes featuring legendary Afghan musicians like Shah Wali, Nawab, Munawar, Said Alam, many of whom are no longer alive.
