Peter ten Hoopen	P E T E R   T E N   H O O P E N   music archivist
Performing for Ustad 'Baba' Allauddin Khan and friends in Maihar, Madhya Pradesh, India, December 1970, on the grounds of the Maihar Music College that Baba founded. From left to right: Shyam Bihari Pathak, Peter ten Hoopen (sitar), Lakhan Pande, Ustad Allauddin Khan, Ustad Rahkmat Khan, Jawaharlal Sunni (tabla), Udhaiban Singh Thakur.	Born 1944 in the Netherlands. Studied psychology at Amsterdam University while working as a journalist and translator. In 1968, inspired by a deepening love for Asian music, began a three year journey through the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, collecting material for two works of non-fiction and feature articles, photographing for Syndication International, studying sitar at the feet of Ravi Shankar's father in law, the violent saint Ustad Allauddin Khan, India's most revered musician of all time, and recording traditional Afghani music for the legendary Folkways Records (now a department of the Smithsonian) and the Elektra Nonesuch series. Both are represented in musicological collections world wide. [Click here for more facts of life...] Recordings were made in the winter of 1968/'69 in Kabul, Afghanistan, with members of the Radio Afghanistan Orchestra. The field studio equipment consisted of a Uher 4200 Reporter Stereo portable open reel recorder, the reporter's workhorse of the sixties and much of the seventies, with two AKG cardioid music microphones (not the Uher speech mike in the picture) - and no mixing board. Few archivists of ethnic music in the field carried mixing equipment, or even a second microphone, keen as they were to keep the total gear portable. The Uher alone, with its brick size power unit, could cut deep into the shoulder. With such technical limitations it was quite a challenge to achieve a proper sound balance when recording with a band of instruments of greatly varying acoustic impact, such as bowed strings, wind instruments and drums. Most of the work with the Afghani musicians, about 50 hours in all spread over several weeks, went into arranging and rearranging their seating relative to the two microphones, making a test recording, listening, asking a few people to move, et cetera. The artists were immensely patient. Some, notably Ustad Muhammad Omar and Moussa Kassimi, would take an active part and come up with alternative arrangements to create a better overall balance. Hearing them now reminds me of a line in a song sung by Hamida Rokhshana: "Let me be near you, oh my love, or die near you of a tormented heart.'
Peter ten Hoopen	R E C O R D  A L B U M S  ethnic music
	Afghanistan, Music from the Crossroads Elektra Nonesuch H-72053, 1973 Recordings made in Kabul, winter 1968/1969, with members of the Radio Afghanistan Orchestra. Published in Elektra's now historical Nonesuch Series (according to Dirty Linen 'a fabled achievement in the history of world music'), directed by Teresa Sterne. Recordings by Peter ten Hoopen. Liner notes by Peter ten Hoopen and Prof. Mark Slobin, Wesleyan University. Five Stars in Rolling Stones Record Guide 1983. Found in musicological collections world wide, from Berkeley to Skidmore and Osaka University.
	The Teahouse Music of Afghanistan Folkways Ethnic Records FE 4255, 1977. Recordings made in Kabul, winter 1968/1969, with members of the Radio Afghanistan Orchestra. Recordings and sleevenotes by Peter ten Hoopen. Published by the legendary Moses Asch's Folkways, after his death reissued on LP and CD (FE 4361) by the Smithsonian Institution. Go to their website to download a PDF with cover art and liner notes. Click here to play brief samples.
The original idea was to record the music played in the Kabuli teahouses, so I spoke to some of the teahouse musicians, trying to set up recording sessions. They were warm to the idea, and amazingly professional: "You don't want to do that here, my friend. You get too much background noise. All these guys chattering, cracking sunflower seeds, hawking and spitting - why don't you come over to the studio?" I feared they were having me on, but the next morning rode over in one of Kabul's two dozen taxis, and found some twenty musicians willing to work with me. I am forever grateful for their joyful cooperation. It has allowed to save for posterity a music that was little heard at the time, and rarely recorded.

 

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