| Ustad Mohammad Omar | |
| Background: | non_vocal_instrumentalist |
| Birth Date: | 1905 |
| Birth Place: | Kabul |
| Origin: | Kabul, Afghanistan |
| Death Date: | 1980 |
| Genre: | Afghan classical, Rubab |
| Occupation: | musician |
Ustad Mohammad Omar (1905–1980) was a musician from Afghanistan who played the rubab.
Mohammad Omar began music lessons under his father, Ibrahim, who taught him singing, sarod, rubab and dutar. In the mid-20th century, he was Director of the National Orchestra of Radio Afghanistan, which brought together folk musicians from the different regions and distinct ethnic communities of Afghanistan.[1]
In 1974, Mohammad Omar received a Fulbright-Hays Foreign Scholar Fellowship to teach at the University of Washington, making him the first Afghan musician to teach at a major university in the United States. On November 18, 1974, Mohammad Omar gave a public concert at the university, his first rabab performance in front of a Western audience; he was accompanied on tabla by Zakir Hussain. In 1978 he met the German jazz-rock groupe Embryo at the Goethe Institut in Kabul. The concert was filmed for the movie Vagabundenkarawane by Werner Penzel.