Bamyan (Persian: بامیان Bāmyān‎), also spelled Bamiyan and Bamian, at an altitude of about 9,200 feet (2,800 m) and with a population of about 61,863, is the largest town in the region of Hazarajat in central Afghanistan and the capital of Bamyan Province. It lies approximately 240 kilometres north-west of Kabul, the national capital. Bamyan was the site of an early Hindu–Buddhist monastery from which Bamyan takes its name (Sanskrit varmayana, "coloured"). Many statues of Buddha are carved into the sides of cliffs facing Bamyan city. In 2008, Bamyan was found to be the home of some of the world's oldest oil paintings.

Situated on the ancient Silk Road, the town was at the crossroads between the East and West when all trade between China and the Middle East passed through it. The Hunas made it their capital in the 5th century. Because of the cliff of the Buddhas, the ruins of the Monk's caves, Shar-i-Gholghola ('City of Sighs', the ruins of an ancient city destroyed by Genghis Khan), and its local scenery, it is one of the most visited places in Afghanistan. The Shar-i-Zohak mound ten miles south of the valley is the site of a citadel that guarded the city, and the ruins of an acropolis could be found there as recently as the 1990s.

Dawood Sarkhosh (Persian: داود سرخوش‎ also spelled as Daud Sarkhosh) is an Afghan poet, singer, and musician born 1971 in Daykundi, Oruzgan (now Daykundi Province) of Afghanistan. He belongs to Hazara ethnic minority group of Afghanistan.

Sarkhosh's inspiration was his elder brother Sarwar Sarkhosh, a legendary musician of his times who was killed during the civil war.^{[citation needed]} Sarkhosh learned playing dambura and singing from him at the age of seventeen. After the death of his brother Sarkhosh migrated to Pakistan first to Peshawar city then moved to Quetta.

Sarkhosh revived his skills by singing and composing songs inspired by a sense of nationalism and suffering in exile. He didn't sing for commercial gain, but out of nostalgia and to convey the feelings about refugee life as experienced by refugees of Afghanistan dispersed throughout the world. They went to his concerts in their thousands, marking Sarkhosh's rise as a singer.^{[citation needed]} It was in Quetta that he mastered the harmonium under the Pakistani composer Arbab Ali Khan.