Interview with Jean During, orientalist, musicologist and research director at The National Centre for Scientific Research (Centre national de la recherche scientifique or CNRS).

This specialist in Central Asia and author of numerous books here describes the particular characteristics of Ostad Elahi’s music, putting it in relation with his spiritual teachings. The questions examined are the following: Why is Ostad Elahi recognized as the “master” of tanbur? To what extent and how did he reinvent its musical tradition? What place did music have for Ostad Elahi? Can his music be qualified as “meditative”? Is Ostad Elahi’s spiritual teaching as singular as his music? The views presented in this brief interview, are more extensively developed by Jean During in The Spirit of Sounds: The Unique Art of Ostad Elahi (L’Âme des sons : l’art unique d’Ostad Elahi), 2003 by Rosemont Publishing and Printing Corporation.

http://www.e-ostadelahi.com/eoe-en/category/interviews/