The World's Mary Kay Magistad caught up with a Pamiri band in Tajikistan. The band is called Samo - which means sky.

Shanbe Mahmoudgaminov and his band Samo are practicing in the Musical Instruments museum in Dushanbe. They tune their rabab and tambur. Both are types of lutes. Then Shanbe starts to tune something else:

MAGISTAD: So this looks like a metal box, an oblong meal box.

SHANBE: Yes, this is metal box, for oil.

MAGISTAD: What did you say it's called?

SHANBE: A gijak.

The gijak is a spiked fiddle with three strings, and - yes, an old oblong oil can as a resonator. He says it gives the gijak an interesting sound, a mountain sound. This song, from the Pamirs, is called a "Rahpo."

Shanbe says that the Rahpo is one of many pieces of music that are part of the texture of Pamiri life - a life, a language and a musical tradition that can trace its roots back to ancient Persia.

He says the music reflects the sounds of nature - of the mountains, and rivers and forests where he grew up.

SHANBE: "Many, many people in our village play music. My grandfather and my father also were musicians, and we had in our family old, old instruments, about 200 years old. From when I was just a baby, I began and I played music, and music also was all the time in my mind."

Shanbe is now a youthful 39, leading a group of musicians who are far younger. Alishaev Kurbonasen is 24.

He plays the circular-framed, hand-held drum, called the daf:

KURBONASEN: "I liked this music from when I was 10 years old, and started studying with the master, who is Shanbe. Our grandfathers were playing this music, and I just liked it. That's why I was trying to keep it."

The Pamirs have preserved this music in a purer form than in Iran, because the remoteness of the place spared the Pamiris the waves of conquests that both Iran and Tajikistan faced over the centuries. But modern life - and pop music - are now seeping into Pamiri villages. Shanbe says, even he's been guilty of contributing to that process:

SHANBE: "Because I've been also in the United States, in Canada and Europe. And I bought this keyboard and went to village. And all the people there say, very interesting instrument. You should all the time play with this instrument. And I think about it, and I think, it's good, but it's not like my rabab and tambur. Better my instruments."

This song is called "Shireen, Shireen" - which means sweet, sweet. There's a moody, yearning quality to the vocals in this and other Pamiri songs. The lyrics are often based on ancient Persian poems - many of them Sufi. So the yearning tends to be more spiritual than romantic. The Pamiris themselves are Ismaili Muslims - a relatively tolerant, mystical branch of Islam. Some strict Sunni Muslims consider the Ismailis heretics, and during the civil war here in Tajikistan in the 1990s, Pamiris were targeted by the Sunni majority. Shanbe lapses into his own language to talk about that time:

SHANBE: "Lots of Pamiris were killed here in Dushanbe, so a lot of Pamiris fled back to their mountain villages. And then, the first step toward peace was to bring the musicians back from the Pamirs to Dushanbe. They organized a concert in one of Dushanbe's main parks, and there was a lot of dancing, music, and the peace process followed from there."

After all, Shanbe says, it's hard to keep thinking of a people as your enemy when you enjoy their music. Now, Shanbe and his band Samo are living and working in a city where a decade ago, they might have been shot on sight. They're hoping that their new CD - their first - will reach a wide audience here - and build an even stronger appreciation of the music that springs from the roof of the world.

For The World, I'm Mary Kay Magistad, Dushanbe, Tajikistan