Ensemble Bakhtar is one of the principal groups specialising in the performance of traditional music from Afghanistan. The Ensemble's members have studied with master musicians, most notably Zainab Herawi, Herat's leading professional singer, Ustad Mahmoud and Ustad Mohammed Omar, respectively the tabla and rubab masters in Kabul. Members of Ensemble Bakhtar have performed at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Teatro Massimo Palermo for UNESCO, and for His Majesty Zahir Shah in Kabul. Veronica Doubleday and John Baily are British ethnomusicologists and performers who spent over two years studying in Herat. Tabla player Yusuf Mahmoud comes from a celebrated family of musicians in Kabul. He is the son of Ustad Asif Mahmoud. His ancestor was one of a number of performers brought over from India as court musicians in the 1860s. These families have maintained the tradition of Indian music up to the present day. I am so privileged to be part of this group and experiment with so many similarities between Afghan and Greek music. The Pontic lyra 'replaces' in a way one of the main traditional Afghan bowed lutes, the Afghan ghichak.