PESHAWAR: A noted radio anchor person and an expert on music, Haji Aslam Khan, has recently brought out a book on the traditional Pushto music of bygone days. The new 512-page book titled ‘Tair Hair Awazoona’ (The forgotten voices), contains important information on the golden era of Pushto music. The book has profiled around 100 top folk singers of the golden era of Pushto when radio was the only source of entertainment. The book on old Pushto music is expected to become a valid research document on the topic. Young scholars will gain a lot from this precious document. Also, music lovers will come to know about the contributions, of our legendary folk singers. The book is in fact a compilation of the scripts of a popular radio Peshawar music show that used to air old Pushto songs. According to the author, Laiqzada Laiq, then the show producer only a few old spools had been preserved and a full-fledged show could not be planned, however, he agreed later at the request of the author who was supposed to run the planned music show. The music show has gained widespread popularity and is attracting a large number of audiences. “I made a request to the audience on radio during a show that anyone who had any old spool containing old Pushto song should donate it to Radio Peshawar, and the response was overwhelming”. “The music lovers from different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA began pouring in spools and the number swelled up from just a few spools to 4,000. Soon it became a precious asset of Radio Peshawar,” Mr Khan writes. He says that Radio Pakistan should preserve these spools and should transfer them to the computer. The radio anchor person then started a research on collecting complete profiles of several folk singers for quite some years. Nawab Ali Khan Yousafzai, a retired producer of Radio Peshawar, in his remarks expresseds that Haji Muhammad Aslam Khan deserved a doctorate degree as he had conducted an invaluable research on old Pushto music. “It is indeed a great achievement to collect information on top Pushto folk singers whose voices were lost and the young generation was totally unaware of the tremendous contributions of those artistes,” Mr Yousafzai commented. In addition to old Pushto singers of the past, the book also profiles a few music recording companies including “His Master’s Voice”, “Bungaphone” and “Gulshan”– which had been set up in Kolkata, Lahore and Peshawar. The book carries rare photographs of some of the most popular singers and instrumentalists of those days. Also the book mentions a few popular Pushto plays which had been preserved on spools. The Awami National Party, leader Mian Iftikhar Hussain, while commenting on the quality of the book writes that Haji Muhammad Aslam Khan had written a very comprehensive book on the old folk singers whose voices were still ringing in the ears of the audience familiar with that era. “It was on my suggestion that Aslam Khan also anchored the same show on Pakistan Television Peshawar (PTV), centre. It can serve as a crash course for research scholars on Pushto classical period,” Mr Hussain claimed. The author pledges that he would bring out another edition of his work on popular old Pushto singers hailing from Balochistan and Afghanistan. Senior writer, Saadullah Jan Barq remarks that he feels proud to have introduced Aslam Khan to the radio listeners many years ago, who later, did a great job by conducting research on Pushto folk singers of yore and enlivened the golden era of Pushto music.