A personal archive built one cassette at a time.
Mohammad Hassan Zmarai, affectionately known as Kaka Zmarai, is an Afghan cassette collector, recording producer, and cultural custodian based in Peshawar, Pakistan. For decades, his life has revolved around Afghan music: collecting tapes, identifying singers and musicians, recording artists, distributing cassettes, and preserving recordings that might otherwise have disappeared.
His collection contains thousands of Afghan cassettes spanning popular music, folk and regional traditions, refugee recordings made in Pakistan, rare radio material, private and majlis recordings, cassette artwork, handwritten labels, and information about musicians and recording sessions.
But the importance of Kaka Zmarai cannot be measured by cassette numbers alone. His knowledge of artists, labels, studios, musicians, recording histories, and refugee musical networks often provides context that cannot be recovered from a cassette sleeve or audio file.
For the Afghan Cassette Archive, his contribution is imperative. He is not simply a collection holder. He is a living source of musical history whose memory helps ACA identify recordings, correct incomplete metadata, understand how albums circulated, and reconnect tapes with the communities and musicians that produced them.
