Unchained melody: Traditional music revived as security improves

For years the distinctive twang of Pashtun music was drowned out by rattling gunfire and deafening explosions as musicians in Pakistan's northwest were targeted by militants. But, as security improves, a centuries-old tribal tradition is staging a comeback.

Performances that once took place in secret are returning. Shops selling instruments are open and thriving again, while local broadcasters frequently feature rising Pashto pop singers in their programming.

And new, up and coming bands like Peshawar's Khumariyaan have reached rare, nationwide acclaim after appearing on the popular Coke Studios broadcast, where they fused traditional sounds with modern tastes -- spreading Pashtun music far from its native homeland.

"Music is the spice of life... it has been a part of our culture from time immemorial," says Farman Ali Shah, a village elder and Pashto poet in Warsak village near Pakistan's tribal areas in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Pashtun music is characterised by the rabab, a Central Asian stringed instrument, played to the beat from tablas drums, with songs salted with florid lyrics describing the pain of unrequited love or calls for politcial revolution.

"For centuries we were a liberal society," explains rabab player and member of the National Assembly Haider Ali Khan from Pakistan's Swat Valley.

"We love our religion but at the same time we love our traditional music." Yet the slow creep of extremism had been threatening that tradition for decades.

Beginning in the 1970s more hardline Islamist movements started gaining influence in the Pashtun areas along the border with Afghanistan, promoting strict interpretations of the religion including dismissive takes toward music