I wrote this for a festschrift volume in honor of my friend Pierre Centlivres who, with his wife Micheline Centlivres-Demont, taught me so much about fieldwork in 1968 when we met in their base town, Tashqurghan. The Taymuree family was of invaluable assistance in our first and subsequent trips. The oldest brother, G. S., was the first Afghan I met while I was training in grad school in Ann Arbor, and we had close connections for years.
The discovery of a shaman playing a Central Asian fiddle was quite striking – not even the old travelers’ accounts of Afghanistan had mentioned such a practice, let alone so far into the 20 th century, so we knew we had to write up this discovery. The Centlivres wanted to publish in an American anthropology journal and I was able to place our joint article in a prestigious journal, Ethnology. It was not easy to translate their French and blend it with my contribution, and then the imperious editor, George Murdock, completely revised nearly every sentence when he copy-edited the piece. I was obliged to accept his version.
This was my only foray into textual analysis of Afghan materials. I had learned the basics of Persianate poetry in a high-level seminar at Michigan taught by Gernot Windfuhr. My classmates all became notables in the field: Jerry Clinton, Walt Andrews, Don Stilo, Iraj Bashiri. As I was the first music person in Iranian studies there, they were very indulgent to someone who was in way over his head.
This was my last article on music in Afghanistan, for an anthology aimed at new directions in studying the area, so I was able to more fully develop the question of media.
It was enjoyable to be asked to give a talk for my friend Bruno Nettl; we always had very cordial relations. I turned to recent film as a way of updating my older work on Afghanistan; sorry not to have the clips to go with the talk.