Farhad Darya

Farhad Darya (Pashto/Dari: ; born 22 September 1962) is an Afghan singer, composer, music producer, and philanthropist.

Active since the 1980s, Darya has been one of the most renowned and influential Afghan pop musicians of the modern era, contributing to establishing new wave in Afghanistan and blending urban and rural styles.

Darya's career has spanned multiple genres - including semi-classical ghazal, pop, folk, and rock - as well as both his native languages Dari Persian and Pashto as well as Uzbek, Hindi and English.

Outside his music career, Darya is a philanthropist and campaigner for human rights, having served as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) National Goodwill Ambassador for Afghanistan, and is involved in numerous charitable organizations, such as Music Village and others.

Farhad Darya was born Farhad Nashir in Kabul, Afghanistan, to a Nasher branch of the Khilji Pashtun tribe.

His family originated from Kunduz Province.

He is the grandson of Sher Khan Nashir.

After moving back from Kunduz to Kabul he spent his senior year at Habibia High School and later enrolled at Kabul Polytechnic University, during which time he started his band.

Being threatened to forcibly join the PDPA, he later transferred to Kabul University to study Persian literature.

During this time, he wrote music for other artists under the pseudonym Abr (Cloud), and started playing Afghan and Indian classical music.

Several times he left university to serve conscription in the Afghan Armed Forces.

It became one of the best known bands in the 1980s, producing hit songs such as "Aay-e-Mann,” “Roz-e-Bazar,” and “Dokhtar-e-Sardaar”. After Goroh-e-Baran disbanded, he started a solo career and claims to have introduced multitrack recording in the country in 1986.

Throughout his career, Darya produced music that broke with the traditional structure of composition, orchestration, and vocal characterization.

His music contains elements of Western pop with classical ones from Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent.

Many of his songs dealt with the Soviet–Afghan War and the resulting misfortunes of the war-torn nation, but also of love.

Popular titles included "Freshta Jan" and "Mehrabaani".

Dozens of his songs were censored due to being critical of the communist government; this censorship was lifted under Mohammad Najibullah.

As with other artists, his songs were recorded at the Kabul RTA studios but number of his songs were recorded at Radio Prague in Czechoslovakia, including a popular song "Do Kaftar" (meaning Two Doves).

By 1988 he started teaching classical music at the University while also pursuing research in the field of music.

Darya debuted on Radio Television Afghanistan (RTA) as the leader of Goroh-e-Baran (meaning "Rain Band") with Asad Badie, Wahid Saberi, Mokhtar Majid and Jawad Rahi, with a fresh genre of folk-pop.

In 1990, Darya left Afghanistan, travelling through Prague and Paris before settling in Hamburg, Germany.

He started recording new content in Paris and Hamburg for his first album while in exile, Begum Jaan, released in 1992, featuring more experimental work.

It included one hit song, "Kabul Jaan", meaning Beloved Kabul.

The song was apparently played by the Mujahideen rebels after they entered Kabul and, nine years later, the first song played by Radio Afghanistan after the Taliban regime collapsed.

His next studio album in 1995, called Afghanistan, became a major hit, featuring diverse acclaimed tracks of different traditional Afghan styles.

Its hit song was the track "Golom Golom".

After this album, Darya and his wife Sultana moved to Virginia in the United States, where he continued his career, recording his next album Shakar released in 1997.

This was another hit album and had a larger number of upbeat dance tracks.

Darya created the soundtrack of an Afghan American film In Foreign Land, recorded and released in California in 1999.

It included a hit song, "Khosham Meeayad".

Following his return to Afghanistan after thirteen years, he worked on his next album called Salaam Afghanistan (meaning Hello Afghanistan, describing his homecoming), which became a major hit in the country and the first such hit in the post-Taliban era.

Thousands of CD copies were sold of the album and especially the lead track "Salaam Afghanistan" became wildly popular.

It was accompanied by a video album shot entirely in Afghanistan released in 2004.

On May 14, 2004, Darya held a large concert at Kabul's Ghazi Stadium.

Up to 45,000 enthusiastic people attended the concert, far above the number of tickets provided, in the first such major event after the Taliban regime when music was banned.

The song appeared on Maffay's album Begegnungen – Eine Allianz für Kinder released by Sony BMG on September 29, 2006.

The concert was listed as one of 50 Great Moments in World Music by the British magazine Songlines in 2008.

Darya described the event as "It was like a national independence day."

Darya then collaborated with German rock musician Peter Maffay with a new project for the benefit of children.

This resulted in his first rock song - and the first Afghan mainstream rock song - named "Salamaalek", sung in both Dari and English, representing a greeting to the world that is both political and peaceful.