The tanbur is back… A few months ago, in 2018, a couple of steps away from the oldest piano in the world, a showcase was inaugurated in the department of musical instruments at the Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). Dedicated to a few “famous musicians” of the 20th century, it featured a Benny Goodman clarinet next to a guitar that belonged to Andrés Segovia as well as one of Ostad Elahi’s tanburs, crafted by the lute maker Nariman, along with a video including explanations and archived images that harked back to the 2014-2015 Sacred Lute exhibit, that we covered here.