TheTraditionofQawwaliMusicinSouthAsianSufism

In the west, one of the most common ways in which nonMuslims are exposed to Islamic culture is through music. To Westerners (Europeans and Americans), however,Islamic music does not carry the same important religious and devotionalconnotationsasitdoestothe Muslims who make and appreciate it. Often seen oncompilationdiscsorasbackgroundmusic in films, Islamic music becomes a source of ambience an exotic addition to what would otherwise not necessarily titillate Western sensibilities. Of the myriad Islamicperformerswhose music has become so popular in theWest,NusratFatehAliKhan,aPakistaniqawwal,orSufi religious singer, is easily the most well known. In Pakistan and India,theQawwaligenreholds an exalted position among the Sufis of the subcontinent, but it certainly did not evolve in a vacuum. The origins of Qawwali can be traced to theeighthcentury,coincidingwiththebirthof Chishti orderofSufism.BasedinthecityofChisht,nearHerat,inAfghanistan,itisbelievedthat Qawwali traveled to the Indian subcontinent with the Chishti order in the thirteenth century (Nidel 244). By the thirteenth century, under Chishti visionaries likeNizamuddinAuliyaandhis disciple, Amir Khusrau, who is known as the Father of Qawwali, Qawwali had reached what could be argued tobeitsGoldenAge(Qureishi1).Khusrauhimselfisfamousnotonlyfor composing Qawwali songs, but also an incredible number ofpoemsandsongsinothergenres, such as ghazal, khayal,andtarana.HeiscreditedasoneofthemajorcreatorsofHindustani Sangeet,orNorthIndianClassicalMusic. In practice, Qawwali can be seen as something of a synthesis of traditional Islamic

devotional music and the native music of the Indian subcontinent. At the core of the Qawwali ritual is the sama,atraditionalformofzikr.Zikr,whichliterallytranslatesasremembering,is a devotional ritual common among Muslims inwhich agrouporindividualsmayrecitethename of Allah, or various prayers, in order to remember God and his importance. Sama, which derives from the Arabic word for listening, is a traditional for of zikr that is traditionally associated with Sufism, and is characterizedbytheritualperformanceofmusicanddance.One of most widely knownformsofsamaisthewhirlingperformedbySufis oftheMevleviorder in Turkey, but it, like Qawwali, is a heavily specialized form of not only sama, but also zikr, andneitheroftheseisindicativeofthepractice. The performance of Qawwali is traditionally associated with not only vocal music, but also various instruments. The harmonium (a small pumporgan), the tablas (a pair of hand drums, which are believed to have been first invented by Amir Khusrau), the dholak (a large, barrelshaped drum), the santour (a Persian zither), the ney (a bamboo or wooden clarinet), the sarangi (a South Asian bowed instrument, like a violin) and the most iconic Indian instrument, the sitar, are all instruments that are regularly used during Qawwali rituals. In addition, the performance is usually accompanied by rhythmic clapping, by both the party performingthepieceaswellastheaudience. The lyrical content of Qawwali can very, from verses of the Quran to Urdu poetry composed by important historical Sufis, such as Khusrau. Most often, the songsfeatureastyle of rhythmic recitation wherein the lyrics, whilenotperhapsoriginallysetto music,arechanted and sung in time to the accompanying instrumentation (Nidel 244) In addition, repetition of a

particularphraseiscentraltomanyQawwals,suchasthenowworldfamoussongAllahHoo, which is most notable performed by Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. This particular formula, as part of the phrase Allahu Allahu Allahu Haqq, is known as the NaghmaeQuddusi, or the SacredMelody(Qureishi45). One of the mostdistinguishingfeaturesofQawwali,apartfromotherIslamicdevotional music, is that it is composed almost entirely in Urdu (or Hindustani, as it was historically known), or sometimes Persian, rather than Arabic,thesacredtongueofIslam.Liketheilahiof Turkey, which are performed in the vernacular, the Qawwals of Pakistan are very clearly of Pakistani or Indian origin, rather than being holdovers from the older Arabic musical tradition. While some may be translations, and certainly some of the Qawwali canon contains Arabic language lyrics, the vast majority of Qawwals are of South Asian origin, and can be traced to theirauthors,andvariousSufitraditions. The transition of Qawwali from a purely devotional ritual designed to praise Allah or Muhammad to a form of quasisecular popular music cannot be exactly pinpointed, but it is most likelythatthishappenedat sometimeintheearlytwentiethcentury,andcoincided withthe introduction of recorded music in South Asia. For much of the genres history, Qawwali has been a closed class, and the tradition was only passed from father to son, often for centuries. With the advent of recorded music, those who wished to experience the environment of a sama or to perform their Sufi zikr intheirownhome,oreventhosewhowereunabletotravel to a performance site, were able to listen to and appreciate this ancient sacred music in the privacy of their own home, or with a group of likeminded compatriots. Because Qawwali

music is so intrinsically tied to the shrines of Sufi Pirs, and because of the closed nature of its performance and tutelage, this opened up a much wider audience for the music, and made it accessiblenotonlytootherpracticingSufis,butmembersofothercommunitiesaswell. Because of its strong affinities to Indian Classical music (indeed, it can be seen as a direct ethnomusicological ancestor of most forms of North Indian sacred and popular music), Qawwali possessed qualities that drew not only Sufis, but also other types of Muslims aswell as nonMuslim listeners. Thelinguisticnatureof thegenremeantthat,unlikesomesacredmusic, which is appealing only to the followers of a religion, who are familiar with its language, Qawwali was understandable to people who spoke Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi, Siraiki and Sindhi. While certainly, the language in which a language is performed will not bar those who do not speak the language from appreciating it,intelligibilityiscertainlyanimportantfactor.Inaddition, while one might assume that the often explicitly Islamic nature of Qawwali might make it somewhat inaccessible to those nonMuslims who would choose to listen to it, this is far from the case. Like much Sufi poetry, the content of Qawwali is largely seen as irrelevant,whereas the intent and meaning of the content takes center stage. The emotional heights that both Qawwals and their audiences reach while performing and listening to the music transcends religiousboundaries,andbringstogetherpeopleofvastlydifferentfaithsandbackground. That being said, Qawwali has, in the last thirty years, made the leap from a dialectical and culturally intrinsic form of devotional music to a style of music that has gained worldwide appreciation and fame.Indeed,thefirstinstanceinwhichAmericanswereexposedtoQawwali on a massive scale was its inclusion inthesoundtrack ofMartinScorseses1988filmTheLast

Temptation of Christ. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, inarguablythemansinglehandedlyresponsible for introducing Qawwali to the west, was included by Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack, and from that point on, Khan was given worldwide recognition as an artist. Today, the Qawwali genre is well known and appreciated by people all across the globe, especially here in the United States, something that seems ostensibly at odds with the prevailing antiIslamic feelings present among the American people. As politics and religion struggle to divide people on artificial grounds and keep cultures distinct from one another, perhaps it is music, especially sacred music, that can serve to bring all people together. Indeed,mankindcantakeacuefrom the Sufi tradition and put our difference aside. As the medieval Persian Sufi poet Saadi once wrote:
Humanbeingsaremembersofawhole, Increationofoneessenceandsoul. Ifonememberisafflictedwithpain, Othermembersuneasywillremain Ifyouhavenosympathyforhumanpain, Thenameofhumanyoucannotretain.(Wikipedia)

ThewordsofthegreatSufimasterscastallofhumankindnotasagreatmassofdiscretegroups andindividuals,butratheraspartsofasinglegreatwhole.Throughtheirwords,andthe Qawwalimusicthattheyhaveinspired,itispossiblethatthewoundsandscarsthathaveso longheldus,asapeople,apart,canbehealed,andmencanexistasonefamily,onepeoplethe ChildrenofAdam.

WorksCited Cornell,VincentJ.VoicesofIslam:VoicesofArt,BeautyandScience.Vol.4.Westport: GreenwoodGroup,2007. Nidel,Richard.WorldMusic:TheBasics.1sted.London:Routledge,2005. Qureishi,RegulaB."SMaster'sVoice?ExploringQawwaliand'GramophoneCulture'inSouth Asia."PopularMusic18.1(1999):6398. Qureishi,RegulaBurckhardt.SufiMusicofIndiaandPakistanSound,Contextand MeaninginQawwali(CambridgeStudiesinEthnomusicology).NewYork: CambridgeUP, 1987. "Saadi(poet)."Wikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia.30Apr.2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saadi_(poet)>.