After two CD releases this year, we also got a taste of Darya’s tour at the end of the year. The tour started off in Birmingham on October the 4th and then moved towards London on October the 5th, Hamburg on October the 11th, Essen on October the 12th, and finally for the first time in Dushanbe on October the 19th. The venues chosen for the shows were among the best concert halls in Europe capable of containing up to 4000 people and the venue chosen in Tajikistan was Kaakh-e Baarbud, Dushanbe’s biggest concert hall.

As most already know, Darya’s shows start with an introduction artist who performs during the first part of the show. His shows in Europe featured Sediq Yakub as the introduction singer with his band who is a fairly new and young singer known mostly among Afghans in Germany. In Tajikistan, the introduction was made by Shabnam Suraya and Sadruddin Najmuddin who are well known among the Tajik people.

I managed to visit his shows in Germany (Hamburg and Essen) along with some more optimistic people who couldn’t wait to see Darya perform. After his UK shows, Darya arrived safe and sound in Germany ready for his third concert in Hamburg for which the program would take place in Audi Max hall and fourth concert scheduled in Gruga Halle in Essen. We arrived there pretty early during the sound check process but were allowed to go inside during both shows and wait for the show to start. Darya and his team were sound checking at that time and the sound system simply sounded awesome. As the show was about to start, the doors opened and the hall started to fill up really fast. As soon as all seats were taken, the introduction artists came on the stage and started off the show with a nice, cheerful, and a full crowd in both shows.

After some upbeat songs by the introduction artists, Farhad Darya made his entrance on the stage, wearing a Lungi and bare feet singing Salaam Afghanistan, and immediately the atmosphere among the crowd changed towards more optimism. This time, Darya came on the stage with more variety in his music. He performed fresh songs from his latest two albums, HA! and Yaahoo (HA!, Gorgore, Khodahafiz Gulesuri, Halla Yaahoo, Mesaazamat, Dunya-e Faani) which he had not performed previously as well as many of his highly demanded and anticipated oldie hits (Mehrabaani, Belandi Haa, Khalwat). He also performed hits from his Salaam Afghanistan, Shakar, and Sarzameen-e Begaana albums. With the variety in his music he had something to offer to everyone in the crowd. In other words: Darya rocked during both shows!

After two nights of awesome music Darya knew he had a tight schedule to keep and flew over to Tajikistan where he would perform for the first time ever. Judging from all the sources I got, Darya gave a very successful show to the people of Tajikistan where the hall was totally full and the Tajik audience spoke of one of the best concerts they had ever experienced or in their own words, “yak concert-e asmaan-kaf”.

You can view more photos in the photo gallery.