Songs of the Pashtu



Zarsanga is a famous Pushtu singer widely known as The Queen Of Pashtun Folklore. She is known for her folk songs, desert arias, and mountainous gharhi (a type of Pashtu tapi) and has many popular songs to her credit. Being an illiterate shepherd from a gypsy family in Tank, Pakistan, she can not sing ghazals and thus concentrates on gharhi and folk songs which are popular among Pakhtoons. Zarsanga was born in 1946 at Zafar Mamakhel, a small village of Lakki Marwat in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. She belongs to a nomadic tribe that used to settle in Afghanistan in summer and stay in Lakki during the winter. In 1965, she married Mula Jan, a resident of Sarai Naurang (Bannu) who was also a nomad. Mula Jan used to play tabla with Zarsanga s father Tekidar. But many say that Mula Jan had eloped her, also loved by her singing partner Khan Tehsil. She has been honoring her childhood nickname, Golden Branch, ever since, and yet remains extremely simple. Zarsanga saw her life transformed at a wedding ceremony in Lakki Marwat when her singing fascinated a master named Mustafa, who introduced her to Rashid Ali Dehqan, producer at Radio Pakistan Peshawar. At that time Radio Station was located near Peshawar Central Jail and when she was giving audition, her reverberating voice even agitated the inmates of the nearby prison who demanded for more, an aged radio employee confirmed her claim. From that day Zarsanga sang thousands of songs for Radio and TV and performed on stage for hundreds of times. Besides winning appreciation from public, she received many awards, including Pride of Performance and Presidential Award from for her contributions. She has also been honoured abroad for her performance. Zarsanga has performed in the USA, UK, Paris, Germany, Belgium, UAE, Iraq and many more countries; but still prefers to live in a tented-house, while at present she is living in a clay-made house in the suburbs of Peshawar. She had also won an international voice competition in Germany organised by Dr Kabir Stori of Pakhtoon Social Democratic Party. Her 25-year old son Shehzada has adopted the singing profession and besides singing at hujra and stage level, has also performed on TV and radio. Zarsanga has six sons and four daughters, two of them married. Only Shehzada, her second son, has stepped into the world of music. Zarsanga's father was proud of her daughter's singing profession, but she herself says that, despite having been blessed with melodious voices, she is against her own daughters singing in public. When asked why she pointed towards her husband that he also did not like it. It is against our family traditions, was the simple answer of Mula Jan. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.