Ustad Ghulam Hossein

Ustad Ghulam Hossein was an Afghan musician, composer and music teacher of Kharabat, Kabul, born in 1876 and deceased at Kabul in 1967. He founded a music school in Kharabat which, with Ustad Qasem Jo's, became one of the two leading schools of classical and modern music in Kabul; he devised the concept for music teaching in the state schools, and his ensemble was absorbed into the orchestra of Radio Afghanistan. ^{1 2}

Ghulam Hossein's family came from the Punjab, in present-day India, to Kabul in the time of Emir Sher Ali Khan, during the Sadozai dynasty, and settled in the Kharabat quarter, next to the Hinduguzar quarter of the Shor Bazar where mainly Hindus and Sikhs lived. His father, Ustad Atta Hossein, was one of the musicians of the Patiala school who came to Kabul at the monarch's initiative to revive classical music there. ¹

Ghulam Hossein learned the sarangi from his uncle Ustad Ghulam Gailani. Later he received music instruction in Peshawar — in raga, among other things — from Ustad Emamuddin Peshawri, and after this study returned home. ¹

In Kharabat he founded a music school of his own; it and Ustad Qasem Jo's school became the most important schools of classical and modern music in Kabul. In the 1920s, when the cautious reforms of Habibullah Khan and Amanullah Khan gave education a high priority, Ghulam Hossein worked out a concept for music teaching in the schools, and he and his students — Ustad Natu and Ustad Pir Baksh among them — themselves taught in Kabul's newly founded schools, such as the Istaqlal Lycée, the Habiba Lycée and the Dar-al-Alemin teacher-training college. ¹

Conservative forces fought these reforms, and music teaching in particular, with religious pretexts; the most prominent opponent was Mullah Abdullah, known as "Mullah e Lang" (the Lame Mullah). ¹

With the founding of the national broadcaster Radio Afghanistan in 1939, Ghulam Hossein's music group was integrated into the radio's orchestra, and its internal music school, with a four-year course, trained a series of musicians and singers; its teachers included the two great figures of Afghan music, Ustad Qasem Jo and Ustad Ghulam Hossein, and their students. Among the members of his ensemble was Ustad Mohammad Omar, the rubab player. The Persian article describes him as the greatest harmonium and piano player of his time and records that he trained many students. ^{1 2}

As a composer he was as famous as Qasem Jo; he set poems and folk songs to music, many of them generations old. He played Iranian and Indian instruments as well as the piano, and encouraged engagement with Western music too. ¹

Ghulam Hossein died at Kabul in 1967. The German article gives his death as 18 September 1967, while the Persian article gives 27 Tir 1346 Solar Hijri, that is 18 July 1967; the two articles also differ on his birth year, the German giving 1876 and the Persian 1265 Solar Hijri (about 1886/87). Though frail with age, he lived to see the success of his life's work in the open, music-loving society of Afghanistan's 1950s and 1960s. ^{1 2}

His son Ustad Mohammad Hossein Sarahang continued his work after him, as did his students, among them Abdul Wahab Madadi, the composer and author of the history of Afghan music on which this account rests. ^{1 2}

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