Vol. 13

Ahang-e Zindagee (The Song of Life) was recorded under increasingly difficult circumstances as the communist regime consolidated its hold on Kabul and began blacklisting artists whose work it deemed ideologically suspect. The album title reads in retrospect as a defiant assertion, and several tracks contain lyrics that carry veiled political meaning beneath their surface romanticism. Zahir's voice on these recordings carries a new tension, as though the weight of the moment had entered the music itself.