A new way to experience traditional music of Afghanistan

(Summer Series): Mathieu Clavel, a master's student in the College of Humanities (CDH) Digital Humanities Institute, is bringing musical heritage from Afghanistan to life using tools from data science and virtual reality. When Mathieu Clavel set out to create an immersive virtual experience of a cultural heritage archive as part of his project for a digital humanities master's course , he decided to go beyond the traditional project framework to propose his own concept, inspired by a long-standing passion for traditional music of Afghanistan and the Middle East. "I was already collecting musical recordings from one of Afghanistan's greatest artists of the last century, Ustad Mohammad Hussein Sarahang. So, it felt really natural for me to work on that archive, because nothing like it really exists online for this kind of music," explains Clavel. In addition to his master's studies in the CDH Laboratory for Experimental Museology ( EM+ ), led by Professor Sarah Kenderdine, Clavel regularly works as a concert organizer and musical tour guide in Iran. He is fluent in several instruments including the rubab - a stringed instrument similar to the lute that features prominently in many of Ustad Sarahang's recordings. Bringing intangible heritage to life Clavel has assembled a large digital archive of some 750 recordings of Ustad Sarahang singing ghazal , one of the forms of classical Persian poetry.