His Master's Voice? Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

Popular Music (1999) Volume 18/1. Copyright 1999 Cambridge University Press.
Printed in the United Kingdom
His Master's Voice? Exploring

Qawwali and 'Gramophone
Culture' in South Asia1
REGULA BURCKHARDT QURESHI
'No modern communications medium is more intrusive in modern Indian life than
recorded and electronically amplified sound' (Babb 1995, p. 10).2 In South Asia,
even the most exclusive student of unmediated music-making cannot avoid a
mediated public soundscape that may well transmit the music being studied over
loudspeakers, radios, televisions, and cassette players. This is certainly the case for
qawwali, a musical genre which is firmly embedded in Sufi practice, but is also
widely recorded and media-disseminated for as long as the life of the Indian record
industry itself. Acknowledging this musical reality after years of live study has
prompted me first to situate the study of recorded qawwali vis-a-vis my own scholarly conventions and vis-a-vis the pioneering work on sound recording done in the
very region of my own study. The aim is to address the problematic of an ethnographic approach to recorded qawwali, and to present preliminary findings, including some culturally meaningful examples from the repertoire.
Why have music scholars been reluctant to address the recorded dimension
of the live genres they study? In interrogating my own practice, I see several related
factors accounting for the received consensus on this matter. One is a conceptual
separation of recorded music from live contexts, articulated by early theorists who
responded to recordings as alien to, if not destructive of live musical practice. The
other is a scholarly focus on the entertainment genres that dominate recorded production and are categorised as popular music. Driven by the phenomenal expansion
of sound recording, the study of recorded music has emerged as a distinct field
linked to popular culture. These are intrinsically Western developments, linked to
techno-culture and the history of commodification. The resulting trend of approaching mediated music as an autonomous domain and of privileging its identity as
'popular music' can, however, limit exploring vital connections with the contexts
of traditional live' music-making. And since this trend essentially parallels the
Western expansion of recording technology and its sonic imperialism, it can also
get in the way of locally centred perspectives on mediated music.
For ethnomusicologists and scholars of traditional musics who are committed
to contextualising live music and creating culturally appropriate interpretations,
engaging with sound recording ethnographically has presented a special paradox
to their scholarly identity. While fundamental to the very existence of the discipline,
recording technology has been so integral a tool to the project of ethnomusicology
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Regula Burckhardt Qureshi
that its practitioners have generally agreed to ignore its existence in the 'field' itself.
The thrust of our substantive attention has been on questions of ethics and representation, focusing mainly on our own recording practices as a tool, rather than a
subject of musical ethnography (Myers 1992).
During the gramophone era there have also been obvious impediments to the
ethnographic study of sound recording, caused essentially by the extensive control
held over the technology and its use by the world's five major recording companies
(Gronow 1981, 1983). This includes lack of access to production processes and
decisions, while information on the consumption, dissemination, or reception of the
recorded product has also been a problematic subject, particularly in colonial settings and unitary successor states. Gramophone recordings have been accessible to
study primarily in two ways: as the result of capitalist commodification, and as a
musical-verbal text.3
The advent of cassette technology, a low-cost, two-way medium with its
widely accessible means of production, distribution, and consumption has changed
this situation fundamentally. For one, the increasing globalisation of non-Western
music as 'World Music' has caused ethnomusicologists to bring cross-cultural issues
to popular music studies (Meintjes 1990, Guilbault 1990). More fundamentally, the
proliferation of local musics on record is generating ethnographic studies of
mediated musics in a range of non-Western societies (Manuel 1988b; Waterman
1990; Erlmann 1991; Yampolski 1991; Guilbault 1993), providing a site of entry for
students of live music.
To consider recorded sound from an ethnographic point of view requires a
broader view of the phenomenon of sound recording, in which the interaction with
the life of non-mediated music is fundamental. This is well exemplified for South
Asia in the recent work of Peter Manuel and by Scott Marcus, each of whom has
built on his study of live genres (ghazal and biraha respectively) to create ethnographies of their media-isation (Manuel 1988b; 1993b; Marcus 1995b) and to situate
these cases within a consideration of the larger impact of cassette recording (Manuel
1993, Marcus 1995a). What these studies contribute to the field of sound recording
is that they approach recorded music no differently from live music, even though
its reified state invites - and understandably often receives - treatment as an autonomous object. In the process, both authors question the conflation of recorded with
popular entertainment music, since they find that recordings not only transform a
functional genre into personal or public entertainment, but may also replace such
a genre and become functional themselves. The other major contribution is to show
how in a free market environment4 the cheap and small-scale process of cassette
production not only creates musical diversity but also breaks up the monopolistic
control over both musicians and audiences which had characterised the gramophone era (despite a fundamental similarity in production relations between the
two media).
From my perspective on qawwali as a historically entrenched religious genre,
as well as a mediated one, these are fundamental insights to be contextualised and
problematised further. In relation to recorded qawwali, there is a need to link functionality to ideologies of practice, and, even more important, technological innovation to social conservatism. The cassette medium is an obvious instance: where
this decentred, flexible technology enables innovation and resistance, it can also be
co-opted to reinforce social and aesthetic conventions, especially where entrenched
aesthetic notions and patterns of reception for recorded music date back two to
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Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia
65
three generations (Manuel 1993). My own years spent within a South Asian, middleclass milieu, as well as among urban musicians, most of them Urdu speakers, have
made me keenly aware of such a blend of notions and patterns embodied in an
earlier repertoire of recordings, and how their affective, social, and aesthetic presence in people's memories is being reinforced by massive cassette reissues from
that repertoire, even when being superseded by new recorded output.5
Does this suggest another way of seeing the proliferation of recorded repertoires on cassette? If consumer preferences are predicated on their particular language, community, and milieu-specific musical repertoires, then cassette technology
offers as potent a means of reinforcing established musical habits as of expanding
or replacing them. The real significance of the technology is that it enables a large
number of other milieus or constituencies, especially rural and lower-class ones, to
access recordings of their particular musical preferences. The result, if surveyed
across the land, is a richly diversified, inclusive market offering, but this offering
may also be seen as an aggregate of very particular repertoires, targeted to and
consumed by particular regional and communal constituencies.
This scenario of diversity stands in stark contrast to the gramophone era when
the music of most constituencies was either silent or marginally co-opted into the
state broadcasting system or parodied in film music, while their constituents had
to subsume their aesthetic to the pre-eminence of what Manuel terms 'standardised,
common-denominator music' (1993, p. 58). In the process, established attitudes
towards hegemonic recorded music of the past decades have become an integral
part of the response to the present musical expansion (Manuel 1993; Marcus 1595a).
More difficult to explore are consumption and listening preferences, rendered
particularly intriguing by the duality of the medium as both a sonic commodity and
a sonic experience to consumers. Since aural sampling becomes crucial to attracting
buyers, the means to widely disseminate performances of recordings is essential, as
is the need to attract listeners to them. The dissemination chain introduces a further
dimension of context and meaning, including the status of the medium itself and
hence the issue of control over its deployment.
The (re)signifying potential of the medium needs also to be seen in relation to
established performing forces. In the case of qawwali, a hereditary performing class
has been guarding a repertoire sanctioned by patrons and spiritual experts, and one
may ask whether such a socially entrenched set of patrons and performers with a
culturally entrenched repertoire is predisposed to maintain this producer-consumpter nexus? What are the bounds of spiritual patronage and who, then, becomes a
studio performer of the genre? Without immediate reference to a specific audience,
how does recorded mediation affect the construction and articulation of meaning
within these historically situated social and aesthetic boundaries?
I am raising these interconnected issues not in order to address them substantively, but rather as a context for exploring mediated qawwali from outside the
domain of media studies. Inserting the notion of a particular constituency or milieu
and its attachment to, or use of, a particular live-recorded genre may be one way
of approaching the impact and role of sound recording, both ethnographically and
with reference to a body of recorded repertoire. Central to this attempt are readings
of qawwali 'texts' which are informed by verbal and musical responses drawn from
my involvement with the qawwali 'speech community' in India as well as Pakistan
over the last three decades, but most intensely during 1968-9, 1975-6, and 1985,
with oral sources extending back in time to the 1920s.
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Noteworthy about this milieu is the categorical distinction between 'speakers' - the qawwali musicians - and 'hearers' - their Sufi audiences and patrons, but
also secular listeners. Furthermore, in a traditionally gender-divided social sphere,
qawwali as a live practice has always belonged in the male domain, admitting
women only as marginal and mostly secluded listeners. This was changed by
recordings, which women could and did hear at home; indeed, my first copied
qawwali tapes came from women, our Lucknow neighbours, in 1965. They also lent
me their hand-wound gramophone.
More generally, the hearing audience of recorded qawwali has extended to a
milieu at once specific and broad; it is characterised by a strong identity of qawwali
with the Urdu/Hindustani speech community and with cosmopolitan urban
Muslim culture, including a historical association of Sufism to the imperial court
and to feudal authority (Ahmed 1963). It is surely significant that the language
and cultural vocabulary of this milieu coincides with the language that dominated
gramophone recording, film, and indeed urban public life not only under the British, but also subsequently in Pakistan and even to a large degree in Northern India
(Lelyveld 1994).
Among urban Muslims, an entrenched attachment to hegemonically disseminated recordings can thus be seen as a token of linguistic and social identification,
in addition to being simply a response to a familiar devotional genre. More ubiquitously, non-Muslim listeners, especially those within the Hindi-Urdu-Panjabi language area, have a clear if generalised familiarity with qawwali as a distinctively
devotional musical genre with a distinctly Muslim identity, rooted in religious practice, but also extending into the secular domain - in the Indian sense of what I
prefer to call spiritual cosmopolitanism.6
What is the impact of several decades of mediated qawwali? In which ways
has recording technology been implicated in the shaping and expansion of the
qawwali constituency, beyond the communities of Sufi practice, and in the broadening of the qawwali genre to serve the interests of its patrons? How relevant to this
shaping has the continuing public performance of live qawwali been, as a religious
genre with a powerful semantic capacity rooted in its function?
A historical-causal perspective on these questions is limited by the fact that,
unlike genres only recently co-opted into the repertoire of recorded sound, live
qawwali has coexisted with its recorded counterpart longer than living memory.
What qawwali music sounded like before the existence of recordings is therefore
only indirectly accessible through written or pictorial sources and oral tradition
(Khan 1949, Imam 1959-60, Ruswa 1963). Instead, I propose to approach 'impact'
as an interactive and continuous process over time, situated within two contexts or
'cultures': the context of sound recording or 'gramophone culture', and the context
of Sufi culture and live qawwali.
The context of gramophone culture
Studies of cassette production have made it particularly obvious that the recording
medium itself is central to the impact of sound recording. Dealing with the gramophone medium is complicated by its industrial status and its links to economic and
political power. Several dimensions need to be considered as a context for exploring
the impact of the gramophone medium on the qawwali genre and its cultural and
social uses.
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The pioneering study of non-Western gramophone cultures by Wallis and Malm
(1984) links the industry to national culture and policy. These links ensure the
hegemony of the recording industry through political economic means, while fostering a symbiotic interaction between recorded 'popular' and live traditional music.
The focus is on the state exercising power, or on communities within states symbolically actualising power through music. By historicising the relationship between
power and music, Attali (1985) and Donakowski (1977) highlight the continuity that
links the political use of music before and after the advent of gramophone recording,
while Gronow (1981) traces the Western hegemonisation of the gramophone industry
worldwide. Crucial to this equation are universal accessibility, bringing music
directly to the individual listener in a seemingly unmediated process, while at the
same time enabling centralised control over production and distribution.
The industrial-technological dimensions of gramophone culture have been
viewed effectively from a 'mode of production' perspective (Shepherd et al. 1977;
Kayser 1976). In its inherent semioticity as a product, the mass manufacture and
distribution of a recorded song is quite comparable to that of any commodity and
so shares with it features such as the fragmented production process, the alienation
of producer from consumer, the loss of diversity, standardisation, and the market
as locus of patronage. What complicates the analogy is the dual property of music
as both message and medium of its dissemination, so that consumption is possible
without acquisition. This makes the role of dissemination through public media a
major facet of gramophone culture, especially in economies with limited purchasing
power. Dissemination is also a crucial prerequisite for the successful marketing of
'style' embodied in the recorded product. Important to the early gramophone era,
broadcasting provides a consumption model for potential patrons of recorded performances dissociated from a live context, a social abstraction which is paraphrased
by the music maker's name and by information about the music. In the West, this
abstraction has something of a predecessor in printed music (Rosing 1984). Related
to this history is the Western-initiated practice on early Indian recordings of having
singers announce their name at the end of the record.7
Broadcasting can also give consumers of recorded music a sense of context by
affording them the opportunity for gestures of participation. Audience feedback,
paralleled in India by buyer responses solicited by the industry from regional retail
outlets across the land (Joshi 1977, Farrell 1993), serves to assess the market, and
feeds back directly into the production process as guidance for achieving a 'formula
consensus' to produce the musical substance as well as a 'product image' (Wallis
and Malm 1984). Both become part of a dialectical interface between a societal
group's desire to assert its identity, and the record and broadcast industry's
reinforcement by feeding their product into the channel of group expression, activating the powerful capacity of music for mobilising actual or potential shared
identity (Hennion 1983, p. 192).
However, the mobilisation of groups within the larger social unit of the nation
state has socio-political implications on both sides. For the subculture, a 'community
of myth consumers' (Hebdige 1979), this articulation creates the potential for shaping musical style, so as to create a symbolic violation of the social order through a
potential 'detachment from the taken-for-granted landscape of normalised form'
(Hall 1977). To realise fully that potential ultimately requires that the group itself
controls the means of sound production. Political Independence as well as Partition,
as witnessed in South Asia, can be seen as the achievement of this goal. Within a
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state, marketing the articulation of subcultures can only be maintained 'so long as
the dominant classes succeed in framing all competing definitions within their
range' (Hebdige 1979, p. 19); hence the concern of governments to regulate the
gramophone industry and subsume it into cultural policies. Broadcasting, the primary target, is appropriated directly, whereas record production is controlled
through licensing arrangements that regulate access to the necessary technology.
Arrangements made normally with a single major recording company8 ensured that
the recording industry worked hand-in-glove with broadcasting.
As documented by Charles Hamm for South Africa, (1991), the music media
have served colonial governments in their agenda of 'identity management' of the
subjugated population. In India, with its linguistic, regional and communal heterogeneity, subculture management has constituted a primary challenge, for which
the recording and broadcast media offered tools of crucial importance.9 Like most
post-colonial polities, South Asia has a recent history of political and economic
centralisation in which central authority co-opts regional cultural forms to serve its
agenda through a marriage of technology and hegemony. While information on
recording companies is scant,10 policy papers surrounding the establishment of
broadcasting in India show a keen sense of awareness of these issues (Lelyveld
1988).11
Gramophone technology has, of course, also imposed drastic musical constraints on musicians who were drawn initially from live traditions.12 In particular,
limited amplification acoustics and the three-minute record devalued performancerelated skills like vocal prowess and improvisation, both of which have been priorities in the live performance of qawwali.
The context of live qawwali
Qawwali musicians and their Sufi patrons share a highly normative oral musical
tradition which is solidly rooted in the quasi-feudal establishments of Sufi shrines.
Qawwali follows the Islamic conception of religious music or chant where music
serves text and religious function (Roychaudhry 1957), but it follows the cultural
performance norms of South Asia (Singer 1972). As detailed elsewhere (Qureshi
1995b) qawwali is the most culturally diverse among Muslim religious genres; it is
also the most 'musical'. In addition to the standard Urdu, it uses entire verses and
poems in Farsi, the classical language of Sufism, and in Hindi, the language of
Hindu devotional poetry. Musically, qawwali admits rhythmic and even melodic
accompaniment on dholak and harmonium which Sufis justify by their impact on
emotional arousal. The function of qawwali music is to present mystical poetry in
a musical setting so as to arouse mystical love, culminating in ecstasy, in listeners
with diverse spiritual needs. The poetry addresses the Prophet and Sufi saints, or
expresses mystical states. The music is placed in the service of this spiritual aim
through its distinctive features. Acoustically, clapping and a stirring drum beat
articulate repeated divine invocation while group singing and enunciation emphasise the text message; durationally, the musical rhythm articulates the poetic metre;
and structurally, the musical form represents text units, while flexible repetition
serves to respond to diverse listeners' needs.
The fact that qawwali is performed by professional musicians or qawwals frees
Muslim devotees from such engagement; socially it also articulates the norm of
feudal patronage for music specialists, as has been the case for art music in South
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Asia. Furthermore, qawwals are documented as having been open to secular music
making and musical entertainment at least from the early eighteenth century
onward (Khan 1949; Dhond, n.d.). These performers are only mediators, lacking
religious status, whereas spiritual (and economic) control resides with the patrons
of the event. The record of both textual and circumstantial evidence indicates that
qawwali has always served as a medium to extend communication to all potential
followers of the Sufi path, which in effect means all societal groups, including the
majority of non-Muslims in India, and ranging from the highly literate to the unlettered. In light of this background, it is hardly surprising that qawwali early on
became a popular and much-recorded religious genre in South Asia.
A life-sketch of qawwali on record: the colonial phase
To convey the historical depth and the rich overlay of style and content, I shall
build this sketch on a historical sequence of qawwali recordings. Given the lack
of access to sources on qawwali record production, the paucity of information on
dissemination, and the ephemeral nature of the reception phenomenon,13 this sketch
can offer no more than an impressionistic composite of historical information and
feedback from performers and listeners. It is inevitably centred on qawwali
recordings themselves, for they are seen as the textual site for articulating, receiving,
transmitting, and transforming meaning: not as objects, but as living musical entities.
In practice, recorded qawwali entered the lives of well-to-do Muslim families
with the purchase of gramophones starting in the late 1930s. Qawwali recordings
were the mainstay of many family holdings; such 'spiritual' (haqqani) songs were
considered appropriate listening for women, although love songs (ghazal) and,
increasingly, film songs were also popular, while children were ubiquitously
regaled with the famous laughing record'.14 Given the considerable expense of a
gramophone,15 far more households acquired radios once they became available in
the early 1940s. Gramophone records were disseminated over the radio and also in
public locations, mainly shops.
The songs chosen as examples are among the many well-known recordings
which people I know owned or heard a lot. Back to the earliest example from the
1930, all these selections are today still familiar and dear to older Urdu speakers;
together they present a repertoire selected for its salience within the performing
and listening milieu itself. It is also notable that qawwali recordings disseminated
by the media continue to constitute a select repertoire by selected performers who
thereby enter a pantheon of figures that 'one' knows, as the authors of songs whose
sound or memory is shared. I have transcribed and discussed these selections so as
to convey a sense of the impact of this music, and so connect the frozen performance
to the living context of its reception by individual listeners. At the same time, they
are concrete instances of the broad historical developments that constitute the wider
context of this recorded genre.
In South Asia, recorded sound came to a highly centralised colonial empire
with a long history of hegemonic control. Under British and, earlier, under
feudal Muslim rule, this highly stratified society was dominated by, and oriented
to its powerful central elites and their local counterparts. The struggle for independence saw the emergence of new ruling elites in India, Pakistan and later
Bangladesh, along with the growing self-assertion of groups or subcultures shar-
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ing linguistic, regional, or religious identities. From this resulted a dynamic

process of political power seeking cultural domination, and cultural identity
seeking political assertion. At the same time, social hierarchy and long-term
central domination have contributed to a strong cultural conservatism.16 Another
factor contributing to conservatism is the pervasive power of oral tradition
which reinforces the power of memory and of cultural things remembered. Most
important, oral tradition served as a channel of elite control long before the
advent of recording technology.
After the advent of sound recording all these forces continued to exercise their
impact even though record manufacture, like all mass production, did entail a shift
of orientation from the land to the commercial segment of society, from the resource
holder to the cash holder. Did gramophone technology, then, simply serve the same
controlling elites or their successors? Examining the qawwali genre suggests that
the far reach and at the same time the fragmentation of the listening context promoted a supra-local commonality, abstracted from, though not superseding, local
musical identities.
South Asia's long history of recorded sound is characterised by the monopoly
of the British Gramophone Company, later EMI, one of the 'Big Five', which established record production in India in 1908 (Gronow 1981). Its monopoly started being
eroded only in the late 1970s when some competing companies were finally able to
enter the market (Kinnear 1985). The salutary diversification resulting from this was
quickly superseded by the shift to cassette technology in the 1980s. EMI's hegemony
fell and so did the production of records, clearly because of the absence of any
copyright protection (Manuel 1993). This trend appeared earlier in Pakistan where
an open market permitted the free influx of cassettes and playback equipment,
unlike India where this is a more recent development.
The initial monopoly of the Gramophone Company extended to the manufacture of gramophones and to all distribution; it was further reinforced by the equally
centralised broadcast media (Lelyveld 1988). Indeed, as noted, the continued state
monopoly over radio and TV in both successor states largely accounts for the relatively limited impact of recent diversification in the sound production industry. The
reason is the central role played by media dissemination in a society where the
ability to buy recorded sound and its playback equipment was concentrated among
a relatively small elite.
The early history of qawwali recordings mirrors the contradictions played
out in the development of the industry. Qawwali was prominent among the first
recordings made in Calcutta in 1902 by a touring agent for the Gramophone Company (Gronow 1981, Farrell 1993). The three qawwals recorded then, Pearu, Kaloo
(Kallu), and Fakhr-e-Alam, went on to gain enduring fame with numerous later
records (Joshi 1977). But it was not until the early 1930s that gramophone recording
became widely established, with a major local production facility, and with wide
dissemination through locally assembled Japanese phonographs and through the
newly established All India Radio.
In between, during the 1920s, an initial phase of musical diversification
saw several other recording companies in operation while the Gramophone Company was making recordings in several cities according to regional preferences:
qawwali was recorded in Delhi according to the taste of a Persian-Urdu elite
(Hyderabadi 1982), while Bombay served Gujrati and Marathi markets. By the
late 1920s, however, the Gramophone Company had consolidated its hold on
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the market and established a policy of consolidating their production and repertoire to address urban popular tastes that shared the largest possible market.
For qawwali this meant moving production to Bombay and using a widely
understood lingua france of Urdu-Hindi, or Hindustani to a studio sound that
could be produced in the same facility for all genres. According to a historian
of qawwali, Akmal Hyderabadi, this shift to a more popular type of song was
promoted by a qawwali-loving but unlettered producer at HMV Bombay, to the
regret of more literate Sufi adepts.17
This conception of qawwali fits with the Gramophone Company's early focus
on recording urban professional performers and on music primarily of two types:
the light and classical courtesan songs aimed at an elite audience, and popular
religious songs (Joshi 1977, p. 19) categorised by the industry as 'devotional'. Preferred by linguistically and musically less sophisticated Muslim audiences, 'Muslim
Devotional' was seen to hold an appeal for the Muslim religious community at
large. Its prime market was the urban business communities, especially in Bombay,
who had diverse sectarian and language backgrounds but shared Islamic tenets and
basic Urdu, both as a lingua franca and a language of religious devotion.
The qawwali recordings of the first decades of the century reflect this reality.
Their texts are mostly in simple Urdu, quite unlike the standard religious qawwali
repertoire which used either Persian, literary Urdu, or devotional Hindi. Another
adjustment to a standard Muslim market is topical: the early recordings are predominantly hymns to the Prophet (na't), with a few Shi'a hymns (marsiya) and only a few
songs addressed to Sufi saints, not to mention texts expressing mystical states or emotion.
Example 1. Kaloo Qaunval: 'Oh Let Me Die by the Tomb of Muhammad'
(Ham mazar-e-Muhammad pe mar jaenge) (Angel 3AEX-5191)
Verse 1:
Refrain line:
Verse 1:
Refrain line:
Nam-e-ahmad ke sadae utar jaenge

Zindagi meri ek khwab kar jaenge
Ham mazar-e-Muhammad pe mar jaenge
I offer my all in Ahmads' (Muhammad's) name
He turns my life into a dream
O let me die at the tomb of Muhammad
VERSE 1
(HARMONIUM)
Nam - e
J> = ca.28O
Tonic = C#
VOICE (HARMONIUM IN UNISON THROUGHOUT)
ah
mad
ke
sad
qe
tar
ja
en
r pUr
(HARMONIUM)
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J J
JMJ
Nam
- e
ah
mad
ke
sad
qe
tar
ja
en
(BANJO)
J
8e
Zin
T(HARMONIUM)
p
- da
gi
khwab
ek
r P 'r
fl
kar
ja
en
(BANJO)
d
g
j JU
Y P 'r r
(HARMONIUM)
(BANJO)
-jJ>Ham
ma
- zar
Mu
f i j Ji3H
ge,
Ham
ma - zar
ham - mad
e - Mu - ham
mad
pe
pe
mar
mar_
ja
en -
ja - en - ge
Example 1, 'O Let Me Die by the Tomb of Muhammad' (Ham mazar-eMuhammad pe mar jaenge) is a favourite song by Kaloo Qawwal that exemplifies this
style. Transcribed from an LP reissue of recordings by both Kaloo and Pearu, the
recording dates originally from the early 1930s when the two singers were 'reigning
supreme in the realm of recorded music' and also 'drew large crowds wherever
they sang' (Ahmed 1968). The solo song is accompanied by spirited tabla playing
and very plain melodic accompaniment on the harmonium while a 'banjo' offers
the melody in tremolo strumming an octave higher. The simple devotional poem is
set to a standard Muslim hymn tune for this particular poetic metre, a multiple of
-u- (long-short-long syllable).
The Gramophone Company pursued a clear policy of exploiting separate
religious communities as markets. This is evidenced by the release of the same film
music for Hindus and non-Hindus, along with communally differentiated advertising (see Joshi 1977). At the same time the Company created its own 'hegemony
through style' in the form of a standard ensemble: a solo voice accompanied by the
imported harmonium and tabla became the ubiquitous sound combination for all
recorded song, including qawwali. Initially, the limitations of recording and microphone technology may have contributed to this acoustic simplicity, but with the
development of autonomous music for the silent cinema, and with 'talkie' films in
the 1930s, the basic studio instrumentation was expanded to include the clarinet
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and other instruments borrowed from Western popular music. One non-Western
import came from Meji Japan in the 1920s: the daishokoto, a factory-assembled board
zither (koto) with typewriter keys to stop the strings and a sound somewhat resembling a banjo. Called bulbultarang (nightingale's voice) or simply 'banjo' in India
(Qureshi 1980), it became a particular favourite with popular qawwali. These Westernised innovations are hardly surprising given that record and film production,
and even radio, were Western imports and initially in the hands of Western producers. Even after the gradual indigenisation of the industry, the long years of
exclusive dissemination and the glamour of its studio identity have given this
instrumentarium great staying power up to the present.
To reach all possible audience groups the general policy was to target religious
and language communities and then to identify genres within them. By far the most
widely recorded category, 'Urdu Muslim Islamic,' encompassed the qawwali repertoire under consideration here. Initially Urdu was the predominant language category for all gramophone recordings, given its official status under the British. In
addition, the label Urdu represented the Muslim cultural identity and even subsumed
songs in Hindi. The Gramophone Company's eclectic search for markets also led to
some early recordings of unaccompanied chant, including a recorded segment of
Qur'an recitation,18 although these appear to have been discontinued soon. In contrast, it soon became clear that qawwali could double as entertainment, not only
because qawwali with its instrumental accompaniment is closer to secular song, but
also because of its heterodox religious provenance and its often highly metaphoric
texts.
During the British period the record industry settled for solo songs of a popular
devotional type with little evidence of the authentic sound character of Sufi music. Of
course, the three-minute duration of these recordings could hardly permit the freedom to repeat and amplify musical portions which is so essential to that idiom. In
fact, the early recordings share stylistic traits with contemporary urban entertainment
music like charbait and nautanki, as well as with the music that accompanied silent
films and was later incorporated into film songs (Joshi 1984). But ultimately the industry did not invent this idiom: it only promoted and projected it, thereby giving preference to what were essentially freelance urban entertainers over the tradition-bearing
hereditary qawwali performers who were, and still are, affiliated with Sufi shrines in a
quasi-feudal arrangement. Through this preference Pearu, Kaloo, and Fakhr-e-Alam
became 'stars' who also performed widely before huge live audiences, both Muslim
and non-Muslim (Enayatullah 1976), and in settings ranging from open-air grounds
to recital halls (Lutfullah 1989). They were often dressed in Western clothes and sitting
on chairs; Kaloo is remembered for always appearing in an impressively neat Western
suit (Enayatullah 1990). His photograph (Ahmed 1968) embodies a Western-Islamic
image: with tie, shirt and jacket he wears a Fez, the formidable Pan-Islamic head-dress
favoured by elite Muslims at the time.
The recorded solo style of qawwali singing had a limited impact also on the
religious qawwali performed in shrines. By the 1940s two recording artists emerged,
Azim Prem Ragi and Waiz Qawwal, who also impressed Sufi audiences. While in
proper Sufi settings they did not use studio instruments as was done for recordings,
Waiz Qawwal used to intone a simple melodic accompaniment on the sitar. The
recognition of these performers in Sufi circles is reflected in their names and special
titles - Waiz ('Religious Commentator'), Prem Ragi ('Minstrel of Love') - which were
bestowed upon them by Khwaja Hasan Nizami, a great Sufi and literary figure
IP address: 211.25.202.5
74
attached to Delhi's Nizamuddin Auliya shrine (Gore 1976), This fame in turn influenced the diversification of qawwali recordings towards including some genuine
Sufi classics, like Azim Prem Ragi's recording of the famous Persian poem Nami
danam die manzil bud by the thirteenth century poet Amir Khusrau.
Out of this early interfacing between religious and recorded qawwali styles
there appears to have emerged a highly significant shift in structure, both textual
and musical, towards what I term narrative-didactic qawwali. The underlying principle is that of inserting verses (girah) between reiterations of the same line of song
text, a practice originally meant to explicate difficult Sufi poems (Gore 1976, Nizami
1975). The growing popularity of the practice among Sufis coincides with the
increasingly important patronage of the urban business communities who lacked
the classical education of the traditional Muslim elite. In popular qawwali the technique of verse insertion was easily expanded into a form of story telling (katha)
where each episode is followed by a punch line repeated clamorously. Because here
the singer controls the text sequence, he can turn it into a purely audience-oriented
entertainment.19 Recordings could present only a highly compressed version of this
technique, but thanks to the qawwal's proverbial ability to respond appropriately to
any performance context, successful versions abound even on three-minute records.
Example 2. Ismail Azad: 'Our Muhammad is Full of Splendour' (Muhammad hamare bari shanvale)
(EMI 4 TC 04B 3962)
Refrain:
Inserted verse:
Refrain:
Our Muhammad is full of splendour!

Muhammad gave his community the Faith
In giving the Faith, he gave the Qur'an
Through Him, the weak became strong
Becoming strong, they became courageous too
When Muhammad came, then blessing came too
When blessing came, the good fortune came too
When good fortune came, then abundance came too
When abundance came, then benefaction came too
And the splendour of Muhammad's prophecy came too
On his brow the stamp of prophethood came too
How great it is that Divine Law came too
Sovereignity came and miracles came too
Instantly the mantle of Faith came to all
Through Muhammad's coming, the Qur'an came to all:
Our Muhammad is full of splendour!
Refrain:
Muhammad hamare bari shanvale
Inserted verse:
Muhammad ne 'ummat ko iman baxsha

Jo iman bakhsha to qur'an bakhsha
Gharaz natawanon men taqat bhi ax
Jo taqat bhi ai to jurrat bhi ai
Muhammad jo ae to rahmat bhi ai
Jo rahmat bhi ai to daulat bhi ai
Jo daulat bhi ai to barkat bhi ai
Jo barkat bhi ai to ne'mat bhi ai
Muhammad ki shan-e-risalat bhi ai
Sar-e-pusht mohr-e-nabuwwat bhi ai
Bari bat yeh hai shari'at bhi ai
Vilavat bhi ai karamat bhi ai
Sar-e-dast daman-e-iman aya
Muhammad ke ane se qur'an aya:
Refrain:
Muhammad hamare bari shanvale
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75
J = ca.2O4
Tonic = B[>
REFRAIN
ife^fJ '
V'l
fl
ba-n shan - va - le
Mu-ham-mad ha - ma - re_
P it
(STRINGS)
GIRAH
(NO TABLA)
J'J JJ'JJj'JJJ'JJjjJJi'J JJ'J'JJ'JJJ

Mu-ham-mad ne 'um-matko T-man
bakh-sha
Jo i-man
JJUJJ-'JJJ
bakh-sha
Jo ta-qat bhi a - T to jur-rat bhi a - i
J i j'jJj'j i
J J J'jij-J
M u - h a m - m a d j o a - e t o r a h - m a t bhi a - i
J o r a h - m a t b h i a - i t o d a u - l a t bhi a - i
JW J J
J o d a u - l a t bhT a - T t o b a r - k a t bhT a - T
J o bar-kat bhi a - i t o ne-"mat bhi a - i
J Jf J
M u - h a m - m a d kT s h a n - e - r i - s a - l a t b h T a - T
bakh-sha to qur-'an
jjj
G h a - r a z - n a - t a - w a - n o n m e n t a - q a t b h i ai
Sar-e-pusht
m o h r - e - n a - b u w - w a t bhT a - T
j J J J J J J'JJ J'JJ
a-n
bat
y e h hai sha-n-at bhTa - T
r pr r
Sar-e - dast
da-man-e-l-ma-n
V i - l a - y a t bhTa - Tk a-r a - m a tbhT a - T
a-ya
Mu-ham-mad ke a - ne se qur-'an a-ya:
REFRAIN
TABLA ENTERS
Keh Mu-ham-mad ha - ma - re_
ba-n
shan
- va - le
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76
Example 2, 'Our Muhammad is Full of Splendour' (Muhammad hamare bari

shanwale) well illustrates the chain-like process of text insertions by the first famous
Bombay qawwal, Ismail Azad. A star of the 1940s and 1950s, he also set the trend
for Muslim performers of recorded qawwali in India to adopt names with patriotic
reference (azadi designates India's Independence) and hence supra-communal
appeal, thereby neutralising the communal identity which is inevitably contained
in all traditional Muslim (and Hindu) names. The name was later adopted by several other, totally unrelated qawwals, most famous among them Yusuf Azad who
made his name with popular secular qawwali recordings.20
Musically, this narrative style is outstanding for its lack of melodic movement,
except for melodic markers at structural turning points in the song. Most conspicuous
among these is the impending conclusion of the inserted girah recitative; it is marked
by a conspicuously high register and a quick descent into the refrain. The verses contain a repetitive, even playful, oratory typical of other Indian oral narratives. Indeed,
this style of qawwali became highly popular as a non-religious genre, especially in
contests (muqabila) between two qawwal parties who, in live performances, outdid
each other in improvised verses. In Bombay, such contests were favourite live entertainment in the 1940s, sponsored by Muslim neighbourhood associations.21
The increasing use of narrative naturally led to a topical expansion in textual
content, reflecting on conditions of the time, including changing political realities.
Even a cursory review of sound recordings as well as broadcasting shows that
they were profoundly affected by both the freedom movement and the subsequent
independence from Britain. The effect on qawwali records is notable in a thematic
shift towards a heterodox Sufism addressing Indian saints and embracing a general
humanism which extols all religions. This accords with the spirit of independent
India's commitment to secularism, a term which in the Indian context means less
to eliminate religion from consideration than to give consideration to all religions.
Example 3. Habib Painter: 'This is Where You Find God'
(Bhagvan isi men milte hain) (EMI 7EPE 1440)
Verse:
Refrain phrase:
Inserted verse:
Refrain phrase:
Verse 1:
Refrain phrase:
Inserted verse:
Refrain phrase:
Man, this image made of clay, this is where you find God
But when he forgets himself, you find the devil in him
You find God in him, and you find the devil in him
This is where you find God
Just see the observances of these Sheikhs and Brahmans . ..
As if God were confined to temple and Kaaba . . .
The Ka'ba, the church, the gurdwara, the river Ganges,
Why be concerned with the differences among them?
Your purpose is to worship, do it wherever you please,
you fool!
You can find God everywhere!
Yeh khak ka putla hai lekin Bhagvan isi men milte hain
Jab rup se ghaflat kar le to shaitan isi men milte hain
Bhagvan isi men milte am shaitan isi men milte hain
Bhagvan isi men milte hain
In sheikhon brahman ki parastish koi dekhe
Keh jaise haram-o-dair men baitha hai Khuda band. . .
Keh Kaba-o-kalisa gurdwara-o-girja ganga
Insan in jhagron se tujhe matlab kya
Tujhe sajda hi karna hai, jahan chahe vahan karle, pagle:
Bhagvan sabhi men milte hain
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77
VERSE 1
J = 160
Tonic = G
CLARINET (WITH HARMONIUM AND TABLA)
r tir r ^
r tfr
VOICE (CLARINET AND HARMONIUM IN UNISON, TABLA ACCOMPANIMENT THROUGHOUT)
tl
Yeh
khak
ka put - la
hai
le - k i n _ Bhag - van
i - sT
meri_
J' J J' J J
mil
- te
ha
van
Bhag
i - si
men
mil
te
hairi
CLARINET
r r
(TABLA STOPS)
FREE RHYTHM (NO TABLA)
r LJ r r r
(CLARINET)
Bhag-van
LT r
Jab
rup
se
i - si
gha - flat
meii_
kar
le
mil - te
to
hairi
shai - tan
(CLARINET)
i - sT
men.
TABLA ENTERS
J^ J J
mil - te hairi
shai
4
-
tan
i^0
i - si
men.
. J
mil - te
hairi
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GIRAH
FREE RHYTHM (NO TABLA)
J1
' J" J"1

Bhag-van i - si meii mil-te haiii
In sheik-hoii brah-man ki pa-ras-tish ko-i dek-he_
J' J J J' J J J
Keh jai - se
0
Keh
ha - ram - o - dair
men bai - the hairi Khu - da
*
gurd - wa - ra - o - gir-ja
Ka - 'ba - o - Ka - li - sa
In - san
in
jha
r rirr
Tuj-he saj - da hi
- grori
kar-na
band
hai_
se
tuj - he
ja-haii cha - he
mat - lab
gan - ga
kya
va-hari kar - le pag - le
Example 3, 'This is Where You Find God' (Bhagvan isi men milte hain) is a
famous song extolling this ideal. Habib Painter, an equally famous qawwal,
hailed from Northern India, but assumed an anglicised trade name reflecting
Bombay business patronage rather than that of a Sufi shrine. The staying
power of this recording is evident since it has been quoted by the contemporary Abdurrahman Kanchwala and much later by Ghulam Farid Sabri in
another famous narrative qawwali, T am Immersed in Love for the Saint',
(Main to Khwaja ki divani). The text uses a basic Urdu-Hindi of deliberate
simplicity which is reinforced by an equally simple descending melody with
repeated notes, especially to conclude every refrain (milte hain). Here the
accompaniment shows a prominent use of the clarinet, indigenised in technique to offer ornate embellishments of the simple song tune. Indigenisation becomes visible as well in the performer's dress and presentation in performance. The high collared shervani coat22 has replaced the Western coat and
tie, and even on stage these performers have returned to sitting on a sheetcovered floor.
Essentially, the 'story-telling' qawwali represented an expanded influence
of popular entertainment on record production; but its lower-class character
evoked disapproval from the Muslim elite, begining with elite performers themselves. Long-time HMV producer of classical recordings G. N. Joshi reports a
telling incident from 1952 when the great classical ghazal singer, Begum Akhtar,
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79
was almost irreparably lost to the Gramophone Company because an unlettered

official made the offensive suggestion that she model her na't recording on the
qawwali style of Ismail Azad (Joshi 1984, p. 71). The fact is that the narrative
qawwali had, by the 1950s, become a highly successful, secular performing
genre, and recordings by its star peformers were excellent sellers. This turned
qawwals like Ismail Azad and later Yusuf Azad into prime recording artists and
in turn enhanced the impact of their 'Bombay style' on recorded religious
qawwali.
A further factor in this complex feedback process is that of the film industry, now concentrated in Bombay, and its enormous output of song records. By
about 1950 a distinct filmi vocal sound had become established, adapted to the
microphone and reflective of the essentially romantic stereotype of the male
hero. This somewhat crooning sound (klasiki avaz, literally 'classical voice') stands
in distinct opposition to the vocal norm of religious qawwali, but it has clearly
influenced recorded qawwali. Another facet of film music is its focus on melodic
structure, composed or arranged to create a memorable tune at least for the
main song line, as well as an attractive instrumental frame introducing the song
and separating its verses. Both features began to appear in qawwali gramophone
recordings, culminating, by the 1960s, in 'composed' qawwali songs, arranged
and recorded under the guidance of a music director. These include a set of
religious qawwali recordings from the one 'Muslim Social' film which was made
around India's greatest Sufi saint: Muinuddin Chishti of Ajmer. Appropriately
entitled Spiritual Lord of India (Hind ke Wali), the film employed as its music
director the versatile Hindu qawwal Shankar Shambhu who also starred as the
main singer.23
Example 4. Shankar Shambhu 'O Let Me Come Face to Face with You'
(Didar tumhara hojae) (EMI EMOE 2378)
Verse 1:
Refrain Phrase:
Inserted verse:
Verse 1:
Refrain:
Inserted verse:
May peace come to my restless heart, suoport to my

troubled life
My eyes thirst to see You, O might I come face to face with
You
O let me come face to face with You
The world calls you the Messiah of our time
A single glance from you can heal the lovesick soul
Please drop your veil and show us your splendour
Betabi-e-dil ko chain ae, jine ka Sahara hojae
Didar ki pyasi ankhon ko didar tumhara hojae
Didar tumhara hojae
Kahti hai tumko dunya masiha-e-zamana
Achche hon ek nigah men bimar tumhare
Parda to ho chuka zara jalva bhi dikha do
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80
INTRODUCTION
VIOLIN (2 TABLAS)
Ni-gah - e - shaug
VOICE 2
kab se
mun - ta - zit
hai
dld_
ho - ja - e
VOICE 1
su-kuh - e - dil
aut 'a-shi-goti ki 'ld_
mi - le
ho-ja-e_
VERSE 1
,
BOTH VOICES
FULL OPENING LINE
J. J. ;J
Be - ta - bi - e - dil
ko
chain
j J J J ' ! i J.
dil
ko
chain
e_
a j'" j
Be - ta - bT - e -
e_
m
jT - ne
ka
sa - ha
ra
TABLA ENTERS
ho
ja
e, ho - ja - e,
jT-ne ka sa - ha - ra
ho - ja
VOICE 1 (DIMINUTION TO 2/3)
Be - ta-bT-e-dil ko
chain a - e,
jT - ne ka sa-ha-rS
ho
ja
VOICE 2 (DIMINUTION TO 1/2)
Be - ta - bi-e-dil k o _
chain a - e, jT -
ne ka sa-ha - r a _
ho - ja - e
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DT-dar
ki
pya
i - khoii
- sT
ko
DT-dar
ho-ja
e, ho-ja-e,
81
3 turn - ha
Di-dar turn - ha - ra
ho-ja
ra
p r r Lr r
GIRAH
VOICE 1
J J JJ j'U j
Kah - ti
Ach - che
ha turn - ko
hoti ek
dun - ya
ma - si - ha - e - za - ma - na
ni - gah men
bi - mar
tum-ha
re_
VOICE 2
Par-da to ho
chu-ka za-ra
jal -
TIHAI PATTERN
va
bhi dik - ha
do,
va
bhT dik - ha
do_
s c_rr rr
bhi dik-ha
do,
za-ra
jal
p^
- va bhi dik - ha
(DIMINUTION)
Par - da
Kab se pa-re haiii
to ho
chu - ka
ta - l i b - e - d i - dar_
do,
za-ra
za-ra jal
jal
- va
tum-ha - r e , _ Di -
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82
REFRAIN
di - dar
turn - ha
ho
- ja
Example 4, 'O Let Me Come Face to Face with You' (Didar tumhara hojae) is
perhaps the best-known of these songs, enhanced by the stunningly melodious
tenor voice of Shankar Shambhu, whose effortless high register and vocal agility
make him a musical favourite among recorded qawwals. The use of a second singer
enhances the melodic scope of the song, while retaining its solo quality, in keeping
with the established style of recorded qawwali. Appropriate for its film setting, the
song uses a catchy tune spiked with syncopation, coloratura patterns and a forceful
cadence with a punchy 'first ending' (on the word hojae repeated in diminution)
signalling a repeat of the refrain phrase. Brief instrumental interludes in the style
of the instrumental 'piece' of film songs include Westernised chromatic bits, but
Shankar Shambhu also eclectically employs classical techniques of rhythmic intensification (tihai24 and diminution). The text is a simple song of longing for the Saint's
presence.
The most important impact of the film industry on qawwali, however, is
its successful adaptation of the idiom to entirely secular purposes, invariably in
films of the category 'Muslim Social' where a colourful qawwali-type group
song, sung by either/or men and women, served to invoke a typical Muslim
atmosphere while introducing musical and visual variety. To serve this purpose
it follows logically that such songs should emulate the typical sound character
of qawwali: group singing, hand clapping, rhythmic accentuation and crisp
articulation.25 A famous landmark is the first women's qawwali from the 1948
film Zeenat.26 The sum total of all these developments was a diversification and
dilution of the genre's religious character in its recorded form.
Post-independence trends
Following Independence in 1947, two distinct sound recording histories began to
evolve in India and Pakistan, although the Gramophone Company continued to
hold a virtual monopoly in both countries. Their different religious-political foundations found expression both in record production and in the disseminating media
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83
of radio and later television. This in turn affected patronage and therefore the wellbeing of recording artists themselves.
India made major changes to its broadcast policy which had an important
effect on qawwali. In contrast to its regular appearances during the first decade
of All India Radio, qawwali virtually disappeared from programming for some
years after Independence. Under B.V. Keskar's policy of cultural nationalism for
music,27 mainstream AIR programming focused mainly on the patronage of
classical music and for five years even banned air play of all popular or filmi
records. From the late 1950s qawwali reappeared in sharply reduced form on
two 'special audience' programmes, which in an interesting way also reflected
the two-tier 'class structure' of qawwali. The 'Urdu Programme' served to
articulate Muslim culture, while the 'Rural Programme' addressed a regional
popular audience. At the same time, Bombay-style secular qawwali was
heard on filmi broadcasts of Radio Ceylon and later All India Radio's Vividh
Bharati.
Recordings made during the 1950s and 1960s reflect in their texts an increasing emphasis on Hindi vocabulary, on Indian saints - rather than the Prophet
and Arabia - and on the religious tolerance of Sufism. Hindu performers gained
more prominence in the recording field - though not in the Sufi establishment also because many talented Muslim qawwals were lost to Pakistan (Henry 1988,
p. 214).
In Pakistan, both national radio and the recording industry were established
in Karachi in the early 1950s. This newly constituted nation's search for a musically
expressed identity apart from India led to emphasis on distinctive elements in
qawwali, as the one musical genre with a clear Muslim identity (Qureshi 1996).
Radio Pakistan created and strongly propagated a qawwali-like national genre
based on the poetry of the great national poet Muhammad Iqbal and labelled Iqbaliat. But despite massive dissemination on the radio this genre never gained popular
or industry acceptance.
During the same period, religious qawwali was broadcast on Radio
Pakistan each Thursday night and Friday evening, gradually supplanting Iqbaliat
as a form of quasi-national music. The Gramophone Company of Pakistan found
the market soon supporting an increasing production of qawwali, in contrast to
the limited demand for classical music that could largely be satisfied with rereleases from India. A fortuitous constellation of factors supported the expansion
of the qawwali idiom in Karachi during the 1950s and 1960s. Patronage was
intense among immigrants from Urdu-speaking areas of India, while qawwals
brought different local styles from Sufi centres in India, with resulting competition, imitation, and mutual inspiration among them; all this took place in
Karachi during the years of immigrant hegemony in what was then the centre
of Pakistan.28 The expansion was characterised by both the preservation of tradition and by musical innovation, especially in the direction of art music, a
development which had been pioneered much earlier in Panjabi qawwali by the
late Mubarak Ali Fateh Ali (Enayatullah 1976).
Recordings became the effective vehicle for standardising and disseminating
these innovations, predictably within the parameters of the established 'Bombay'
model of popular qawwali. What made this possible and helped push recorded
qawwali into a place of musical prominence was the belated introduction into
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84
South Asia of long-play technology in the 1960s.29 By 1972 numerous 45 rpm

and several LP records of religious qawwali had appeared - including reissues
from India - and more LPs followed throughout the 1970s.
The first long-play recordings present 'composed' studio performances with
the conventional studio instrumentation and instrumental interludes, and with
emphasis on a memorable tune at least for the major melodic segment of the
song. At the same time, they are essentially replications of religious qawwali
and therefore contain not only religious texts but also the musical features which
are meaningful to qawwali as a religious idiom. These include the special,
powerful drum beat of qawwali, along with forceful handclapping on rhythmic
accents, multiple repetition of salient phrases (takrar), appropriate verse insertions, and a performance style focused on verbal enunciation and a strong,
open-throated singing voice. The introduction is strongly rhythmic and often
includes a traditional introductory verse sung in recitative (ruba'i). But in between
verses, instrumental interludes are absent or reduced to minuscule cadential
formulas, so that the continuous verbal communication of the song is not interrupted. The recording articulates the essentially open-ended sequencing of the
verse structure, but presents it in a purposefully composed performance, for
ultimately it aims at creating a memorable entertainment even while invoking a
religious experience.
Three performers from Karachi led this development, first on 45 rpm
discs, followed by several LPs. Manzur Nyazi and Bahauddin, highly pedigreed
among hereditary qawwals (qawwal bachche) and associated with the Nizamuddin Auliya shrine in Delhi (Qureshi 1995b), introduced a rich Sufi repertoire
and performing style. But it is Ghulam Farid Sabri, from a regional shrine and
a generic musician's lineage (mirasi), who came to dominate as an innovator and
performer and within a decade went on to become the very embodiment of
modern qawwali in the Indian subcontinent and even abroad. Focusing on his
music and its impact since the late 1960s illustrates the transformation of
Pakistani qawwali into a national idiom and the role of recording in the
process.
In Ghulam Farid Sabri a number of qualities converge that have gained
his recordings the widest distribution and recognition, turning them into models
which have been imitated and emulated in Sufi assemblies throughout South
Asia. His tunes are well composed and arranged, even where he uses traditional
Sufi melodies, supporting the text in both style and structure, but also shaped
to the need for tunefulness and memorability.
Melodic and rhythmic variety abound in Ghulam Farid Sabri's recordings,
starting with the introductory verses, and extending to melodic inserts as well
as final invocational formulas. His first long-playing recording, Tajdar-e-Hamm,
illustrates these qualities: the melody in raga 'Bhairavi' is melodically expansive
and rhythmically diverse, as well as technically demanding. Known and imitated
by qawwals all over South Asia, this is musically the most remarkable and
certainly the most famous of all Ghulam Farid Sabri recordings, as is summarised
in Example 5. For the first time in recorded qawwali the text features the full
linguistic and connotational range of Hindi and Farsi verse inserts, in addition
to the main text in Urdu.
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85
Example 5. Ghulam Farid Sabri: 'Lord of the Kaaba'

(Tajdar-e-Haram) (EMI LKCA-20000)
Refrain line (Urdu):

Inserted verse (Farsi):
Refrain line (Urdu):
Inserted verse (Hindi/Farsi):
Refrain phrase (Urdu):

Repetition/Inserted verse:
Repeated Phrases:
Opening Line:
Refrain:
Inserted verse (Farsi):
Refrain (Urdu):
Inserted verse (Hindi/Farsi):
Refrain phrase (Urdu):
Repetitions/Inserted verse:
Repeated Phrases:
Lord of the Kaaba, bestow your benign glance on us

so that we, the deprived, may have a better
life
Prophet of God, look at my wretched condition
Lord of the Kaaba, bestow your benign glance on
(H) What can I tell you, Prince of Arabia

you already know what troubles my heart
(F) O you who are called 'unlettered', when I
am separated from you
(H) my nights are endless.
Your love makes me forget all sense,
how long must I wait for news of you?
(F) Won't you cast a secret glance at me,
(H) Won't you listen to my voice?
Lord of the Kaba
Oh You, Prophet of God/Tell the morning
breeze
Oh You, favourite of God, oh you the chosen
one
Oh You, who exudes fragrance of musk and
amber
Oh You, helper in need, oh miraculous
healer
Oh You, solace of those who are sick with
sorrow.
Tajdar-e-Haram ho nigah-e-karam
ham gharibon ke din bhi sanvar jaenge
Ya Rasulallah ba ahwal-e-kharab-e-ma babin
(H) Ka turn se kahun ai Arab ke kunwar

turn janat ho man ki batiyan . . .
(F) Gahe bafigan duzdida nazar
(H) kabhi sun bhi to lo hamri batiyan
Ya Rasulallah/Kahna Saba ko . . .
Ya Mustafa, ya mujtaba . . .
Ai mushk bez amber fisha ...
Ai charagar, Isa nafas,
Ai munis-e-bimar-e-gham
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INTRODUCTION
J = ca.lO4-16C
HARMONIUM Tonic = Gjj
BANJO
Qis - mat meri_ me-rT_

HARMONIUM
OPENING LINE
J = 104
CHORUS
Ta-jfl-dar - e - Ha - ram
ham gha-n - bori ke
din
ho
ni - gah - e - ka - ram
bhi
san - var
ja - en - ge
REFRAIN
J = 108
SOLO
Ta - id-dar - e - Ha - ram
Taj
ho_ ni-gah - e - ka - ram
dar - e - Ha - ram,
ram, ni-gah-e - ka- ram,_
Taj_
ho
ka-ram._
Taj_
dar - e - ka - ram,
<> dar - e - Ha -
ka-ram.
ka - ram_
GIRAH (FARSI)
J = 120
SOLO, THEN CHORUS
Ya Ra-su-lah
lah ba ah-wal - e-kha-rab-e
ma ba-bTn
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REFRAIN
J=,32
JJJJJ'J
m0 J 0
s
Taj
dar - e - Ha - ram
ho
GIRAH:
0
Taj
SOLO, THEN CHORUS
tum_
ja - nat
r r LT
Ga-he ba-fi-yan
Taj
Ka
ha - ram
dar - e
ni - gah - e - ka - ram ho ka-ram,
ur 'r a
0
s
01
ho
tum_ se ka-hun
man_
ki
ai
Rab d
ke kuri-war
ba-ti-yari
I
a
duz d dT - da na-zar 3- kab-hi sun bhito lo
ham-ri
ba-ti-yan:
m
dar - e - Ha - ram
ho
ni-gah-e - ka - ram, ho ka-ram
TAKRAR REPETITION (AND GIRAH)

J = 144
SOLO
CHORUS Ya Ra-su-lal - lah
Kah-na sa - ba_
Ya Ra-su-lal - lah
Ya
Ra-sQ - lal - lah
Ya Ra-su-lal -
Ya...
TAKRAR PHRASES
J = 160
(16 PHRASES)
J J i n J JJ t:
Ya Mus-ta-fa
Ai cha-ra-gar
Ya Muj-ta-ba
T-sa na-fas
Ai mushk bez am - bar..
Ai m u - n i s - e - b i
mar-e - gham
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88
Within the confines of this word-dominated genre, the Sabri recordings

show an expanded role for instruments, adding variety within, and also between
songs to underscore their character. To begin with they invoke the sound identity
of traditional qawwali through the prominent use of clapping, harmonium, and
banjo as well as the powerful dholak reinforcing the tabla. But they also use a
full complement of studio instruments, singling out instruments with appropriate
associations: a touch of introductory sitar, to invoke classical music as well as
classical qawwali, or the tambourine with metal discs, suggesting popular appeal
for simple devotional texts through its association with singing mendicants.
Perhaps the most important of these trends was the emulation of Middle Eastern drum beats to enhance the increasingly popular Arabic text inserts or refrains
by imparting an Arab flavour which acoustically suggests the abode of Islam and
its Prophet. Example 6 has such an Arabised drumming pattern throughout, along
with its highly effective refrain phrase which is characterised by the sequential
repetition of 'Mustafa' (a title of Prophet Muhammad).
Finally, Ghulam Farid Sabri judiciously expands the element of art music in
his recorded idiom, extending a trend that was pioneered by the late Mubarak Ali
Fateh Ali and also taken up by Manzur Nyazi and Bahauddin. Ghulam Sabri does
so through raga melody and melodic virtuosity; both are self-consciously featured
in the form of short improvisatory passages but timed so as not to break the flow
of the text message. Favourites are salient phrases of a few popularly known ragas
like Darbari, a raga associated with the Mughal court of Akbar, which serve to evoke
Muslim high culture without demanding a sophisticated ear.
In sum, Ghulam Farid Sabri pioneered the transformation of the live qawwali
idiom of which he was a practitioner into a pre-composed repertoire for recordings.
These in turn became standards for mediated dissemination, or even for 'staged'
concert-type performances, but they also continued to accord with an educated Sufi
consensus, not only in Pakistan but also in India where Ghulam Sabri's recordings
quickly gained universal currency among Sufis and Muslims generally. Informed
by the same religious reference frame, recording and radio producers were importExample 6. Ghulam Farid Sabri 'Mustafa' (EMI LKDA 20050)
Refrain:
Mustafa, Mustafa, Mustafa

Mustafa Mustafa Mustafa salle'ala
Refrain:
O Chosen One (title of the Prophet), God be praised.
fa, sal-le-'a - la
Mus - ta - fa, Mus-ta - fa, Mus-ta - ft_
AJ J TTj^ifeg
ta
fa,
Mus - ta - fa,
Mus - ta -
fa.
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89
ant as technical collaborators in this transformation, which also indigenised

recorded qawwali, by moving it away from the Westernised sonic frame of popular
music used in earlier decades.
The process received an important impetus when television broadcasting
was introduced by President Ayub Khan for political purposes in 1967, at the
same time as low-cost TV sets were becoming widely available. PTV's weekly
qawwali programmes gave performers the opportunity to develop a national
visual identity as media stage performers; furthermore, the high status of television reinforced the image of qawwali as 'high class' and serious public entertainment. Hand in hand went the spread of qawwali 'concerts' in clubs and at
government functions, culminating in outright government patronage in the form
of cultural representation and delegations abroad. From this, finally, followed
international tours and record contracts, primarily for the group now called Sabri
Brothers. These developments also motivated a modest shift towards a trendier
personal image for qawwals, through features like long hair and a more effusive
array of gesticulation.
Many other qawwali records were produced during the same decade of 196979, most of a more popular, narrative type and by qawwals of mainly Panjabi origin.
Even a few women qawwals made recordings, typically singing in a low enough
pitch for a standard male chorus to accompany them in unison.30
A different combination between qawwali and popular style was introduced
in the 1970s by Aziz Mian who was the second performer to be featured on
long-play records.31 He emerged in the mid-1970s with a vigorous didactic narrative style reminiscent of the older Waiz Qawwal, but reinforced by a strong
backup chorus for intense multiple takrar repetition. Significantly, his popularity
for 'fighting with God' in song arose directly from the impact of his flamboyant
delivery on the, by then, well-established platform of 'television qawwali'. Showmanship and golden shervani coat notwithstanding, what is remarkable is his
strict adherence to serious moralising, if not strictly religious topics, by means of
respectable Urdu poetry. This upwardly adapted version of the popular narrative
qawwali style testifies to the middle-class market targeted by recorded qawwali
in Pakistan.
The most recent development in Pakistani recorded qawwali is the rise to
prominence of a once again more classically oriented performer team headed by
Nusrat Fateh Ali. Musical heir of the great Panjabi qawwal duo Mubarak Ali Fateh
Ali (and son of Fateh Ali), Nusrat has brilliantly expanded their special tradition of
not only melodic but also rhythmic improvisation. He continues to sing and record
the repertoire he inherited, both in shrines and on stage. His songs of Panjabi
devotional poetry made him nationally particularly attractive in Pakistan, given the
Panjabi majority and its cultural assertion in recent years (Nayyar 1988), not to
mention his appeal to the international Sikh and Indian community. But Nusrat
Fateh Ali's career and musical achievements belong distinctly outside the gramophone era and cannot be pursued further here.32
Assessing the impact of gramophone culture
The manifest function of early recorded qawwali was a combination of entertainment and generalised devotion, clearly Muslim though not particularly Sufi.
Initially, the recorded articulation of Muslim cultural identity is rather populist,
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90
catering to the urban business-class buyers and also to middle- and upper-class
women secluded from live performances - both largely unlettered groups at the
time. Later, recorded qawwali managed to articulate its religious as well as cultural
identity in Pakistan through a style both artful and entertaining, based on a consensus of producing forces and consuming elites that continued to see live practice as
a relevant model for the mediated product, acoustically as well as textually. The
resulting indigenisation of qawwali recording favoured hereditary qawwals rather
than mere studio performers; most of all, it was built on a market of a broad Urduspeaking public in Pakistan.
A coalition between three agents of patronage is behind the actual production and life of recorded qawwali: the producer, aided by the disseminator,
and, ultimately, the buyer. EMI, a low risk taker among large record companies,
pursued a recording policy informed by established socio-religious categories.
Within these they took decisions to produce individual artists on the basis of
what would sell well within three months (Joshi 1984). With performers easily
accessible and largely ignorant of royalties (Joshi 1988, Bhyrappa and Ranade
1988, pp. 84-5), the company's investment was low and largely productionrelated. Disseminating the categories of Muslim religious music - and of qawwali
within it - as reifications of highly contextualised musical genres was an important function of the radio, along with the actual broadcasting of the new decontextualised music.
Serving state ideology, the radio of course pursued an agenda which
changed from British to Indian and Pakistani hegemony, but the structure of the
partnership has essentially remained the same, and so has the main role of the
radio: to help create a context of entertainment for the recorded product, disembodied from its religious function. Here the difference between British, Indian
and Pakistani hegemony becomes significant relative to the place assigned to
qawwali in the larger scheme of musical categories, for priority ranking on the
state-owned media amounts to little less than state patronage. Under the British
the radio provided mainstream promotion for qawwali, reflecting their predilection for ruling class culture. Under Nationalist inspiration, AIR first dropped the
category qawwali, then converted it into an adjunct idiom for two marginal
audience categories 'Muslim' and 'Rural'. By contrast, Pakistani Radio and Television moved qawwali to mainstream religious programming, and expanded this
on television into mainstream entertainment for a national audience.
In Pakistan, a significant contributing factor to the rise of qawwali to the
status of serious public entertainment was the vacuum left by the gradual decline
of the art music culture. In part because of the strong cultural identification of
art music with India, and because of its negative Islamic valuation, it found no
official patronage and the ranks of classical musicians dwindled rapidly.
Qawwali was accorded a quasi-state patronage which provided for the recording
industry not only advertising but also something close to market control over
listener and buyer. Listeners were guided by this official patronage, consuming
qawwali as an approved package of Muslim entertainment-cum-devotion. Buyers,
on the basis of observation and reports, largely followed suit, but they also
wanted diversity and novelty, hence the industry's reliance on a tried studio
formula along with an openness to new versions of that formula.
The performer, finally, played a role as the sole identifiable human agent
behind the recorded qawwali, but only if an association between them was
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created for the listener - hence the performer's ingenious technique of saying
his own name on the record. Recording qawwals did become widely known
and drew secular audiences at public performances. But the development of a
'qawwali star' image remained limited, even in Pakistan (possibly because
qawwals' identity is too closely attached to the functional religious context of
qawwali and to the service character of their professional status), until television
bestowed a visual identity on Ghulam Farid Sabri 'with his long hair', Aziz
Mian 'with his golden shervani and wild gestures', and Nusrat Fateh Ali 'with
his rotund face and body'. It was their entry into the Western World Music
circuit with concerts reinforced by recordings, that gradually invested Ghulam
Farid Sabri and especially Nusrat Fateh Ali with stardom.
Considering things from the qawwali performer's own vantage point, a
recording could transform him from an executor of a ritual to a musical initiator
serving a secular patron. Initially drawn from the class of urban entertainers
with rural roots, recording artists later also included hereditary perfomers with
Sufi patronage whose outside success derived from their ability to adapt their
music to the needs of the market. But recordings outside the film industry have
essentially been no more lucrative than performances; their return is fame more
than money. Recording 'stars' still depend on live patronage of whatever class,
although they can use their fame to get it. An extreme example of this is the
participation at the 1975 anniversary Curs) celebrations at the Gulbarga shrine
by Shaukat Nazan, a qawwal whose claim to fame - and his very name - derive
from the fact that he had once been a member of cinema recording star Aziz
Nazan's qawwal party.33 According to South Asian qawwals, both famous and
not famous, financially more important is a recording qawwal's easy access to
lucrative private engagements of wealthy businessmen where 'black' money is
spent on 'wine fountains' and on competitive, conspicuous tipping during the
qawwals' performance. This of course stands in stark contrast to hereditary
shrine performers who rarely manage to get contacted for such boons.34 The
exposure to recordings has in fact enabled non-hereditary or atai (amateur)
performers to swell the ranks of a traditionally hereditary profession, with their
repertoires built directly from recordings, thereby putting competitive pressure
on hereditary shrine performers.
In their own way these performers and spiritual leaders are engaged in what
amounts to a constant process of mediating between the established expressive
tradition of Sufism, which is vested in the oral tradition of its affiliated performers,
and the highly persuasive current idiom of 'Sufi entertainment', which is enshrined
in recording. The degree of accommodation between the two varies nationally and
regionally; its surface correlates are spiritual status and cultural literacy among Sufi
patrons, but the impact of their choices ultimately depends on their economic position and social support within the larger polity. Here India and Pakistan provide
contrasting instances for the position of recorded qawwali during the gramophone
era.
In India, Sufi shrines have retained their feudal assets, enabling internal control over the live qawwali tradition. But wider patronage has shrunk, leaving
recorded/mediated qawwali to serve as a generic token of Muslim presence within
the national soundscape. The recordings of the early decades remain as a nostalgic
reminder to Muslims of a wider public presence for qawwali, a voice positioned
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92
closer to the centre of hegemonic culture which was made audible through the
Gramophone Company's studio idiom.
In Pakistan, Sufi patronage is widespread, the Sufi constituency has elite
links and considerable local as well as cosmopolitan support. This enables continued Sufi control over live qawwali. But the same constellation has also facilitated the co-optation of Sufi cultural-religious priorities within the national cultural agenda, so that by the end of the gramophone era no fundamental
dissonance existed between qawwali as religious ritual and qawwali as mediated
national music. From the Pakistani vantage point, the early recordings, though
valued (and today re-circulated on cassettes) as the emerging voice of Muslim
sonic culture, have been superseded by a much more compelling national (and
today international) qawwali idiom; already in the late 1970s Ghulam Farid
Sabri's 'Tajdar-e-Haram' (Example 6) could be heard as background music in a
cross-country luxury train compartment.
Who controls the sound of mediated qawwali?
Media-isation is clearly more than the application of recording technology; at the
same time, the recorded product has been fundamental to the introduction of
mediated music into South Asian musical life through the way it has been disseminated and received, imposed and appropriated. The central issue appears to be
control over what is being disseminated and to whom.
Control was certainly an issue where recorded qawwali was consumed
directly. In homes where senior men or women controlled the precious family
gramophone as well as the listening audience,35 playing records was an intimate
shared experience without the social constraints of a formal performance. That
even today strong memories of such listening experiences are associated with
gramophone records is evident from the Listening Meetings of the Society of
Indian Record Collectors in which individual collectors play their records for
other members at home.36 In either case, the basis of the performance is ownership of recordings and playback technology, or control over the sonic content
and its dissemination.
Control and ownership are likewise at stake in the milieu of live qawwali and
its use of media-isation. The conservative spiritual hierarchy and quasi-feudal social
structure that have enabled Sufi communities to control live qawwali production
have not prevented them from using media technology for disseminating the sound
of its performance for their own purposes, and under their control.37 Both loudspeakers and direct broadcasts of special qawwali assemblies are widely used by
Sufi establishments in order to extend the ambit of a qawwali ritual. Like
recordings, these media remove the music from its context, but what they disseminate is their own locally generated Sufi performance. However, the extended range
of amplified qawwali always contains a contradiction: of wanting to reach the ears
of more devotees in large venues and beyond, while also protecting the integrity of
the ritual from inappropriate or ignorant listeners.
That loudspeakers are not adopted without an awareness of their impact
becomes evident from the continuing resistance in shrines where the leadership is
both spiritually sophisticated and economically secure. The most famous such
leader who banned loudspeakers categorically was the Mutawalli, a senior Sufi
official at Muinuddin Chishti's shrine in Ajmer. In contrast to all other qawwali
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events held at this, the most frequented shrine in India, the Mutawalli's own famed
'special' (khas) assembly remained un-amplified, so ensuring the spiritual appropriateness of all listeners, and underscoring the exclusiveness of the gathering
(Mutawalli 1975). For similar reasons, loudspeakers are absent from some ruralfeudal shrines like Kakori (near Lucknow), where qawwals strain to be heard at
large outdoor assemblies.
Radio 'relays' of major shrine rituals, though long established and valued by
both Sufi leaders and qawwals, can also become a site where control over the
mediation process is contested. In 1975 I witnessed the 'relay' in the Nizamuddin
Auliya shrine in Delhi, where well-packaged live broadcast allowed for several
designated performers to sing a time-controlled version of one song each (Luthra
1986, p. 349). When the opening of the first song sent a senior Sufi into an ecstatic
trance, however, the performer did his ritual duty by repeating that same phrase
over and over until the Sufi's trance abated, using up all the broadcast time in the
process. Despite the interfering presence of technicians and equipment, and the
annoyance of the producer, the team of Sufis and performers asserted their control
over the mediated product.
The vigorously functional context of live qawwali stands out against the much
lamented destructive effect of recording on traditional secular idioms (Wallis and
Malm 1984), a process which is today encroaching on many South Asian musical
traditions (Manuel 1991). While recorded wedding songs now regularly replace live
singing at weddings, qawwali recordings, to my knowledge, may represent but
never replace live qawwali in a Sufi assembly.
Present trends
Today, despite the widespread diffusion of cassette technology, gramophone culture with its monopolistic alliance of recording, film and broadcast media has left
its impact as the voice of continuing centralised power structures in both India and
Pakistan. Live qawwali, a remnant of Muslim religious-feudal hegemony, retains
its ritual integrity in both countries. In fact, as developments in Pakistan show, it is
recorded qawwali which continues to derive meaningful religious reference from
the live ritual, resulting in a musical idiom that conveys to its listeners a functionally
composite and portable experience of entertainment. This represents Muslim identity and devotional Islam all in one - a musical style-package by and for the now
emancipated 'subculture' of Indie Islam. Taking Hebdige a step further, this represents a manifestation of hegemony rather than religion, through the assertion of
style.
Emancipated subcultures, however, do not remain static, especially when
vying for hegemony. In Pakistan, where qawwali represents the dominant culture,
its national musical style package has been affected by a changing elite constellation: from a first generation dominated by immigrants from India who identified
with Urdu and South Asian Sufism to a more Western-oriented younger generation
that identifies with local cultures and languages as well as a Westernisation of
musical taste.
At the same time, the Islamisation movement of the 1980s has promoted an
orthodox ideology which is reflected in the proliferation of cassette recordings of
properly religious music in the form of chanted Qur'an recitation and unaccompanied hymns, not qawwali. This flourishing repertoire is remarkable for its faithful
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adherence to religious constraints on its musical presentation. However, those very

constraints would prevent even the most attractive hymn recordings from serving
cultural purposes. Long before present-day 'fundamentalism', when such a hymn
to the Prophet was recorded by a courtesan-actress in a 1930s film38 its screening
provoked such protests from Bombay Muslims that the cinema hall had to be shut
down. A similar response becomes manifest today in the explicitly devout listening
attitude taken on, especially by women, when hymn recordings are being played,
even informally at home.39 In contrast to the heterodox qawwali genre, purely
religious chant remains uncompromisingly context-bound in its association, even
when it has been transformed into recorded music.
In India, on the other hand, strong pulls towards a hegemony of Hindu 'public
culture, and an increasingly secularised cosmopolitan elite, have reduced the marketability of qawwali recordings, especially in light of the influx of recordings from
Pakistan which have become trend-setters for the genre and for Islamic music generally.
Pakistani trends are also behind the internationalisation of recorded qawwali
as a voice within 'World Beat' music. Following the pioneering Western concert
tours of the Sabri Brothers, their international stardom has been eclipsed by the
thoroughly Pakistani Nusrat Fateh Ali with his 'party' of well-trained accompanists.
Nusrat Fateh Ali's rhythmic improvisational style has gained entry for qawwali
into a trendy, cosmopolitan, world music culture, whose audiences respond
strongly, pulling the music away from its textual base. What is being transformed
here, however, is not primarily the music; rather, the generic acoustic features of
qawwali now acquire a new emphasis to distinguish this genre within an international repertoire which is dominated by Western taste preferences. To an extent,
Nusrat Fateh Ali is responding to this trend, but he manages to retain his traditional
repertoire and performance style. A contributing factor here is the considerable
patronage by expatriate audiences who form a significant link that hooks South
Asia into World Public Culture (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1990). Conversely, in
Pakistan itself the media transformation of qawwali has, since the mid-1980s,
responded to a continuing demand for a genre which can function as a representative sound idiom both nationally and internationally - an idiom or icon of Pakistan's own Islamic 'public culture'.
Precisely because recorded qawwali does not qualify as religious music in the
orthodox sense, it could attain, over its considerable life span, a cumulative iconicity
embodying uniquely South Asian Muslim constellations of religious and national
cultural identification, a transformation characteristic of Gramophone Culture.
Transformed under major shifts in socio-political and economic-technological conditions, this iconicity has reflected and invoked hegemony, political more than spiritual. That the technological character of record production has contributed to the
shift to monopolistic control over qawwali comes into sharp focus from today's
vantage point of cassette technology, with its unprecedented diversification and
expansion of production as well as reception. On the other hand, this exploration
suggests that existing political and musical structures, especially of broadcasting,
will probably continue to influence recording in what appears to be an emergent
process of recorded musical negotiations, between centralised political control and
the independent assertion of group identities.
A final note on the research process for this paper: on a declarative level I
have considered the ethnographic implications of the special communicative
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properties of commodified sound by looking at its social and musical uses and
including the crucial dimension of dissemination. What emerges is a recurrent interaction of gramophone and live cultures of qawwali, especially in Pakistan. Qawwali
gramophone culture, at the level of consumption, appears to be less separate from
live practice than a fetishising fixation on recorded repertoire would suggest,
because of the way the sonic medium can become abstracted from the commodity
that initially enshrines it. This has clearly much to do with the ideological and social
grounding of live qawwali.
Or does it have to do with an ethnographic vantage point that privileges that
relationship? In contrast to cassette culture, the ethnographic study of gramophone
culture remains severely limited since access to agendas and processes of production
is constrained by their location close to centres of power. What is limited may well be
the 'ethnographic method' of participatory research, because it is based on the
assumption that the ethnographer occupies a position of privileged access, thereby
excluding institutions of power (which do not offer such access) from its scope.
Seen in this light, the recorded musical 'texts' have offered a, thankfully productive, site for a participatory engagement with gramophophone culture. But how
do the resulting explications articulate with the inherent challenge of approaching
gramophone culture without falling prey to the impact of the medium itself? The
fragmentation of the music-making process, the alienation of the music producer
from the fruit of his labour and the separation of producer from consumer or user
all tend to isolate the sonic output of individual recordings and inevitably lead the
ethnographer herself to engage with recorded sound as the consumer of a commodity. Considering these limitations, is an ethnography of mediated qawwali
possible? To me, this admittedly fragmentary exploration points in the direction of
addressing difference, not only between recorded and live musics, but also between
entrenched scholarly ways of experiencing and thinking about them.
Endnotes
1. My title is indebted to Peter Manuel's term
'cassette culture' (Manuel 1993).
2. Material and ideas for this paper were first
presented at an SSRC-sponsored conference
on 'New Media and Religious Transformation in South Asia' (Mount Carmel, 1987,
see Qureshi 1995a) and explored from a different perspective at the Society for Ethnomusicology's Pre-Conference Symposium on
Asian Popular Musics (Chicago, 1991 see
Qureshi 1992/3). Support for the field
research from the Canada Council, the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council
(Canada), the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute
and the University of Alberta is gratefully
acknowledged. Special thanks go, as always,
to Saleem Qureshi, and also to other family
members, as well as to my teachers and
friends in India, Pakistan, and Canada, all
of whom have been graciously willing to
share their memories and insights. The paper
has profited from comments and per-
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
spectives contributed by anonymous readers

of Popular Music.
An example is Arnold's study of film music
(1988). However, access to valuable records
in the EMI archives in London is beginning
to generate detailed studies on early gramophone production in India (see Farrell
1993).
Literally free, since copyright restrictions are
minimally enforced even after the 1984
revision of the Indian law to cover cassette
recordings (Manuel 1993, pp. 78, 149ff.).
Film songs predominate, but ghazals and
qawwali are also included.
Indian secularism in practice tends towards
religious pluralism and tolerance rather than
a categorical separation from religion.
The practice is well known to all afficionados
of Begum Akhtar's earliest recordings where
the song concludes with the rapid announcement: 'Mera nam Akhtari Bai Faizabadi' ('my
name is Akhtari Bai of Faizabad').
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96
8. See Gronow for information on the way the 22. As worn by Pandit Nehru; see Habib Painter's
colonial world was divided up between the
photograph on 7EPE 1440.
'Big Five' companies in the first expansionary
23. Shankar Shambhu also acted as music director
phase of the recording industry (1981).
in the film Tumhara Katloo (songs recorded on
EPE 7166). He belongs to the few, but notable,
9. In colonial India, print technology, linked to
qawwals of Hindu background, another token
language policy, long preceded recording as
of the eclecticism that has characterised Sufism
a tool of such management (Lelyveld 1994).
and qawwali.
10. In addition to Gronow (1981) and Kinnear
(1985), see also Barnouw and Krishnaswamy
24. A thrice-sounded rhythmic pattern culminat(1980), where early developments are
ing on the downbeat of its third statement.
touched upon in the context of film history.
25. Barely audible clapping is also featured in the
G.N. Joshi's remarkable writings on EMI and
Shankar Shambhu example, no doubt for the
on his role as EMI's Indian classical music
same reason.
producer are rich sources of information, but
26. 'Ahen na bharin shikwe na kiye', featuring the
show that he was privy to shockingly little
famous popular singers Nur Jahan and Zohra
'insider' knowledge about the company
(Angel 3 AEX 5021). For a list of women's
(1977, 1988).
qawwali in films see Hyderabadi (1982, p. 105).
11. Policies relating to music production are
27. Introduced in 1950 and enshrined in the
sporadically reflected in the pages of All
second Five Year Plan in 1952. Keskar was
India Radio's magazine Indian Listener.
Minister of Information and Broadcasting from
1950 to 1962.
12. See Farrell (1993) for a consideration of these
constraints in relation to the classical khayal
28. Karachi was by far the largest city and the
genre.
country's capital until the move to Islamabad
13. The problem is well articulated in Gronow
in the mid-1960s.
(1983 pp. 53-5).
29. Even after Independence this facet of econ14. The Gramophone Company successfully disomic colonialism enabled the Gramophone
tributed this wordless British record throughCompany to delay investing in the new techout South Asia and elsewhere (Joshi 1988).
nology in India and Pakistan, keeping local
producers uninformed of its existence at least
15. In the late 1930s an imported Philips gramountil 1964, as has been graphically reported by
phone player cost 500 Rupees, an enormous
Joshi (1984, pp. 33ff.).
sum at the time (Qureshi, Saleem, 1996).
16. The subculture of Sufism well exemplifies
30. Kausar Jabin's records are an attractive
this connection: hierarchically constituted, its
example, see Angel EKDA 20042.
focus on the highest saints (Mu'inuddin
31. For an example, see EM CPM 5024.
Chishti of Ajmer, Nizamuddin Auliy'a of
32. See Sakata (1994); Qureshi (1998).
Delhi) and their shrines is articulated musi33. He is most famous for his /torn Shambi Jhum
cally in the region-wide emulation of their
(CEDE 3352).
ritual core repertoire (Qureshi 1995b).
34. Meraj Ahmad Nizami of the Nizamuddin
17. Promoted by presumably British manageAuliya shrine, graphically described for me the
ment, Qasim Baba was a former staff tabla
one chance he had to do such a performance
player (Hyderabadi 1982, pp. 103ff.).
(Nizami 1975).
18. Some urban Muslim families owned a
35. The audience included those who live within
recording from the Surah al-Rahman in the
earshot; such listening is always freely shared
1930s (Lutfullah 1989).
with neighbours.
19. Sufis disapprove of musicians arbitrarily
36. For reports on such sessions see the very
stringing verses together (tukbandi), calling it
informative quarterly journal The Record Nezvs
a 'mish-mash' (khichri, a dish of mixed rice
of the Society of Indian Record Collectors
and lentils).
based in Bombay (Chandvankar 1995).
20. More recently, the surname Bharti ('Indian',
37. Sutton (1996) explores this process for Indonefrom Bharat, the Sanskrit name for India) has
sian music.
been adopted by several Muslim women per38. Lutfullah (1989). The film was Talash-e-Haq
formers who sing in a secular qawwali style, for
(Search for God/Truth), the singer Jaddan Bai
instance Shobha Bharti of Delhi. Both are ways
(mother of the famous film actress Nargis).
of broadening the identity of a Muslim name.
39. An obvious case is the universally admired
21. The late Nasiruddin Khan Gore graphically
recordings by Umm-e-Habiba, daughter of a
described his experience improvising verses in
well-known Pakistani Quran reciter. Her first
such contests during his youth in the 1940s
recording became widely distributed in 1976
(Gore 1976).
and won immediate acclaim.
IP address: 211.25.202.5
97
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Popular Music (1999) Volume 18/1. Copyright 1999 Cambridge University Press.

Printed in the United Kingdom

His Master's Voice? Exploring

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Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

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Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

Downloaded: 15 Feb 2012

Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

Downloaded: 15 Feb 2012

Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

Downloaded: 15 Feb 2012

Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

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Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

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Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

ing linguistic, regional, or religious identities. From this resulted a dynamic

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Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

Nam-e-ahmad ke sadae utar jaenge

VOICE (HARMONIUM IN UNISON THROUGHOUT)

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Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

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Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

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Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

Our Muhammad is full of splendour!

Muhammad hamare bari shanvale

Muhammad ne 'ummat ko iman baxsha

Muhammad hamare bari shanvale

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Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

J'J JJ'JJj'JJJ'JJjjJJi'J JJ'J'JJ'JJJ

Jo ta-qat bhi a - T to jur-rat bhi a - i

J o bar-kat bhi a - i t o ne-"mat bhi a - i

y e h hai sha-n-at bhTa - T

V i - l a - y a t bhTa - Tk a-r a - m a tbhT a - T

Mu-ham-mad ke a - ne se qur-'an a-ya:

Keh Mu-ham-mad ha - ma - re_

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Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

Example 2, 'Our Muhammad is Full of Splendour' (Muhammad hamare bari

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Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

CLARINET (WITH HARMONIUM AND TABLA)

VOICE (CLARINET AND HARMONIUM IN UNISON, TABLA ACCOMPANIMENT THROUGHOUT)

FREE RHYTHM (NO TABLA)

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Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

' J" J"1

In sheik-hoii brah-man ki pa-ras-tish ko-i dek-he_

men bai - the hairi Khu - da

va-hari kar - le pag - le

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Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

was almost irreparably lost to the Gramophone Company because an unlettered

May peace come to my restless heart, suoport to my

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Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

aut 'a-shi-goti ki 'ld_

FULL OPENING LINE

VOICE 1 (DIMINUTION TO 2/3)

His Master's Voice? Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia

His Master's Voice? Exploring Qawwali and 'Gramophone Culture' in South Asia