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Interaction between generations; young girls returning from a school function stop to talk to a village elder along the way, in Karimabad, Hunza.
Using a camera with timer set up by my uncle Sher Jan (seen standing with crossed arms), this photo shows Saranda player Muhammad Ali sitting at a Baluchi Chang tribal gathering in Lundi Saidan, near Lalgarh. The gathering is most likely to be for the (circa) 1962 wedding of Mast Ali, who was a homeopathic doctor with a clinic in Lalgarh.
The musician was a local celebrity who played Bollywood film songs as well as Baluchi/Saraiki folk music. He was invited to play at weddings and music festivals throughout Dera Ghazi Khan (DGK) District and later sometimes appeared in cultural shows on Pakistani television.
The instrument shown in the photo is likely to be a local variant of the Iranian Setar, with 3 strings, front-facing tuning pegs, frets and an unusually long fingerboard. This variant may also have been influenced by other long-necked lutes such as the Dombura or Baglama, found across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey and most Central Asian countries.
My family who lived in the town of DGK frequently hosted Muhammad Ali when he was in the area. One such visit stands out, when Muhammad Ali was staying in the men’s guestroom and at night had placed his Saranda (a more ornate Baluchi stringed instrument) on a bench below the room’s mezzanine window. My uncle Sher Jan habitually used that same window as a shortcut to the room from elsewhere in the house. That night, not knowing the Saranda was there, he climbed down in the dark from the window ….. straight onto the instrument, damaging it badly. Muhammad Ali was devastated. Not only do musicians have a sentimental value for their instruments, but they also weren’t cheap to repair or replace, and the Saranda was Ali’s main source of livelihood.
Also shown in the photo is the Sher Dil, the son of Ghulam Hussain (fondly known as Uncle Baluch) who is standing next to Sher Jan, and who later joined the Police and became a high ranking official in Quetta. The man with the largest turban in the front row is Faiz Mohammad Baluch – a water canal inspector/gauge reader, who my father remembers as being terrified of snakes when they went camping on hunting trips.