Afghan musician Aziz Herawi was 7 the first time he heard the strings of a dutar being plucked. He talked one of the family servants, who hid it in a blanket, into buying the instrument for him from a shepherd. The boy would wait until his father was asleep, then sneak into the woods surrounding their home. Alone, in the dark, he practiced, teaching himself to play the long-necked 12-stringed dutar, a kind of lute made of sheepskin.

Herawi, now 57 and a resident of Sacramento, Calif., will perform today and Sunday at the National Folk Festival on the Bangor waterfront. His music is a blend of Persian and Hindustani instruments and styles and considered to be typical of Herat, Herawi’s hometown, near the northwestern border with Iran.

The pieces have the varied rhythms of the Hindustani raga forms, but are short and more intense than most Hindustani music. They often build to very fast tempos, with a wide range of dynamics, sometimes becoming very quiet for dramatic effect. His lute playing also draws from Persian music, Hindustani talas, and the folk forms and rhythms of the Afghan mountains. In addition to the dutar, he also will play the 24-stringed rubab. Herawi told the Los Angeles Times last year through an interpreter that his music comes from “the heart and soul.”

New York Times critic Peter Watrous wrote in the early 1990s that Herawi’s music “was about abandon and ecstasy, with intense sections of improvising, always grounded in a galloping rhythm, giving way to delicate, airy moments.”

Undoubtedly, Herawi’s music will be unfamiliar to the ears of most festival-goers.

Born into a well-to-do family of mullahs, or religious clerics, the musician’s father was extremely conservative and allowed his children to listen to news on the radio but turned if off before music was broadcast. Like some conservative Christians, he believed that music caused “people to dance and lose control of themselves,” Herawi told the Los Angeles Times.

The self-taught musician was still a young man when his father died, and he was able to pursue his passion openly.

“I invited well-known Ustads [master musicians] from India and other regions to learn from and to play with,” he said. “Because what drove me to music was my God-given love for it. When I am holding one of my instruments – especially the rubab – it is like I am holding on to the universe.”

While still in his 20s, Herawi became a well-known performer in Afghanistan. He played before the king, Zaher Shah, with pop artist Ahmad Zahir, and went on the road to Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey and other Central Asian nations.

He career came to an abrupt halt in 1979 when the Soviets bombed Herat and troops arrived to round up local leaders. Herawi was away at the time, practicing with musician friends, but most of his family was killed.

“I went to the mountains, sometimes on horseback, sometimes on foot,” he said. “Risk was everywhere, from the Soviets as well as from [Soviet-sponsored local tribal forces]. The risk was death and death was common.”

Traditionally, music accompanied nearly every private and public Afghan ceremony, with the exception of funerals. During those grim and desperate times of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Herawi lived in the mountains with mujahedeen. He did not play or even hear much music for more than five years.

“I was not happy, and that is why I did not play,” he said, “It did not feel right, since the country was at war and my family members were killed. I was given the opportunity to lead 1,500 men. And, as a commander, my mind was in the war, not music, at the time.”

As things worsened in his homeland, Herawi fled to Pakistan in 1983 and settled into the Afghani expatriate community in northern California two years later. Despite his many years in the United States, Herawi still does not speak English well enough to be interviewed without a translator.

Herawi had never been to Maine before and rarely performs on the East Coast, according to his manager, 29-year-old Vaus Aslaun. Herawi has released two CDs and recently finished a third, to be released next month.

Aslaun, who fled Afghanistan when he was 7, said earlier this week that Herawi believes his primary mission is to help young Afghanis connect with a heritage they barely remember. The musician will tour Europe, where many of his fellow countrymen now live, this fall.

Herawi’s music, according to Aslaun, “represents the deep roots of Afghanistan, transcending ethnic, linguistic and trivial boundaries.”

That is, after all, what the National Folk Festival is about.

Aziz Herawi will perform at 4:30 p.m. today on the Penobscot Stage and at 12:30 p.m. Sunday on the Two Rivers Stage and at 2:30 p.m. Sunday on the Heritage Stage.