Ustad Mohammad Omar Rebab 2

Ustad mohammad omar playing classical instrument, rabab. Ustad ,Rebab Mohammed Omar (1905-1980), an Afghan rabab virtuoso, helped shape what many Afghans identify as their "national" music. While Director of the National Orchestra of Radio Kabul Afghanistan during the mid-20th century, he composed over a hundred melodies known as naghma and brought acclaim to the short-necked plucked lute, the rabab. Over the airwaves, Ustad Mohammad Omar presented a diverse collection of songs from Afghanistan's rich musical heritage. His radio orchestra, with its regional folk instruments, introduced the nation to a variety of folk traditions rooted in the country's many ethnic and linguistic groups.
Mohammad Omar began music lessons under his father, Ustad Ibrahim, who taught him singing, sarod, rubab and dutar. In the mid-20th century, he was Director of the National Orchestra of Radio Afghanistan, which brought together folk musicians from the different regions and distinct ethnic communities of Afghanistan.[1]
In 1974, Ustad Mohammad Omar received a Fulbright-Hays Foreign Scholar Fellowship to teach at the University of Washington, making him the first Afghan musician to teach at a major university in the United States. On November 18, 1974, Ustad Mohammad Omar gave a public concert at the university, his first rabab performance in front of a Western audience; he was accompanied on tabla by Zakir Hussain. In 1978 he met the German jazz-rock groupe Embryo at the Goethe Institut in Kabul. The concert was filmed for the movie Vagabundenkarawane by Werner Penzel.