Overview

Rabab is a very ancient instrument found primarily in Afghanistan but in India is com¬mon in Kashmir. It is a hollowed-out body of wood with a membrane stretched over the op¬en¬ing. Combinations of gut (or nylon) and metal strings pass over a bridge which rests on a taught membrane. The rabab is men¬tioned quite fre¬quen¬tly in old texts. How¬ever this is us¬ually the seni rabab which is dif¬fer¬ent from what we think of today. It is com¬mon to refer to the modern rabab as the kabuli rabab to distinguish it from the seni rabab. Although the kabuli rabab is the style that is normally thought of today, over the centu¬ries the term has been applied to a variety of in¬stru¬ments. There¬fore as a generic term it has been applied to a variety of in-stru¬ments that even impinge upon the sarod and the sarangi. There is evidence that this instrument may be the progenitor of a num¬ber of In¬dian in¬stru-ments. The saringda, sarod, and the sarangi are the ones most com¬monly attributed to this instrument. At first it may seem hard to make the con¬nec¬tion bet¬ween a plucked instrument and a bowed instrument, how¬ever notice the "waist" in the mid¬dle of the rabab. This is an in¬di¬ca¬tion that the instrument at some time was played with a bow. All bowed in¬stru¬ments must be narrow at the place where the bow must pass.

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