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Qawwali (Punjabi:قوّالی (Shahmukhi), ਕ਼ੱਵਾਲੀ (Gurmukhi); Urdu:قوّالی (Nasta'liq); Hindi: क़व्वाली (Devanagari); Bengali: কাওয়ালি (Bengali)) is a form of Sufi Islamic devotional singing, originating in South Asia.
Originally performed at Sufi shrines or dargahs throughout the subcontinent, it gained mainstream popularity and an international audience in late 20th century. Qawwali music received international exposure through the work of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Aziz Mian and Sabri Brothers largely due to several releases on the Real World label, followed by live appearances at WOMAD festivals. Other famous Qawwali singers include Fareed Ayyaz & Abu Muhammad, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Badar Miandad, Rizwan & Moazzam Duo, Qutbi Brothers, the late Amjad Sabri, Wadali Brothers, Nizami Bandhu, Bahauddin Qutbuddin, among others. Most modern Qawwali singers including Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Fareed Ayyaz & Abu Muhammad belong to the famed 'Qawwal Bachon ka Gharana' school of Qawwali, which was based in Delhi before 1947 and migrated to Pakistan after the Partition of British India.
Qawl (Arabic: قَوْل) is an "utterance (of the prophet)", Qawwāl is someone who often repeats (sings) a Qaul, Qawwāli is what a Qawwāl sings.
Delhi's Sufi saint Amir Khusrow of the Chisti order of Sufis is credited with fusing the Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Indian traditions in the late 13th century in India to create Qawwali as we know it today.[1] The word Sama is often still used in Central Asia and Turkey to refer to forms very similar to Qawwali, and in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the formal name used for a session of Qawwali is Mehfil-e-Sama.
Originally, musical instrument use in Qawwali was prohibited. The following conditions were initially placed on Qawwali:[2]
Sima’ (to listen to Qawwali) is permissible if a few conditions are met. The singer must be an adult and not a child or a female. The listener must only listen to everything in the remembrance of Allah. The words that are sung must be free from obscenity and indecency and they must not be void. Musical instruments must not be present in the gathering. If all these conditions are met, Sima’ is permissible.
Someone complained to the Sultan of the Mashaa’ikh that some of the dervishes danced in a gathering where there were musical instruments. He said, they did not do good as something impermissible cannot be condoned.
Moreover, such Sufi Saints, such as Nizamuddin Auliya, the teacher of the famous Sufi singer, Amir Khusrow, were quite blunt about the prohibition:
Musical instruments are Haram.
Eventually however, musical instrument use found its way into Qawwali and modern performers of musical Qawwali will justify their use of instruments by saying that the Sufi Saints do not stop them when they use them near their shrines.[2] Instruments such as Harmoniums, tabla and dholak are now common in many Qawwali parties.
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The songs which constitute the qawwali repertoire are primarily in Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi.[5] There are some in Persian from the Mughal era,[citation needed] and a smattering in Saraiki and dialects of north India like Braj Bhasha and Awadhi.[6][7] There is also qawwali in some regional languages but the regional language tradition is relatively obscure. Also, the sound of the regional language qawwali can be totally different from that of mainstream qawwali. This is certainly true of Chhote Babu Qawwal, whose style of singing is much closer to the Bengali Baul music than to the qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, for example.
The poetry is implicitly understood to be spiritual in its meaning, even though the lyrics can sometimes sound wildly secular, or outright hedonistic. The central themes of qawwali are love, devotion and longing (of men for the Divine).
Qawwalis are classified by their content into several categories:
A group of qawwali musicians, called a party (or Humnawa in Urdu), typically consists of eight or nine men including a lead singer, one or two side singers, one or two harmoniums (which may be played by the lead singer, side singer or someone else), and percussion. If there is only one percussionist, he plays the tabla and dholak, usually the tabla with the dominant hand and the dholak with the other one (i.e. a left-handed percussionist would play the tabla with his left hand). Often there will be two percussionists, in which case one might play the tabla and the other the dholak. There is also a chorus of four or five men who repeat key verses, and who aid percussion by hand-clapping.
The performers sit cross-legged on the ground in two rows — the lead singer, side singers and harmonium players in the front row, and the chorus and percussionists in the back row.
Before the fairly recent introduction of the harmonium, qawwalis were usually accompanied by the sarangi. The sarangi had to be retuned between songs; the harmonium didn't, and was soon preferred.
Women used to be excluded from traditional Muslim music, since they are traditionally prohibited from singing in the presence of men. These traditions have changed, however, as is evident by the popularity (and acceptance) of female singers such as Abida Parveen. However, qawwali has remained an exclusively male business. There are still no mainstream female qawwals. Although kafi singer Abida Parveen has increasingly incorporated qawwali techniques into her performances, she is still not considered a qawwali singer.[9]
The longest recorded commercially released qawwali runs slightly over 115 minutes (Hashr Ke Roz Yeh Poochhunga by Aziz Mian Qawwal). The qawwali maestro Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has at least two songs that are more than 60 minutes long.
Qawwalis tend to begin gently and build steadily to a very high energy level in order to induce hypnotic states both among the musicians and within the audience. Almost all Qawwalis are based on a Raga from the Hindustani classical music tradition. Songs are usually arranged as follows:
The singing style of qawwali is different from Western singing styles in many ways. For example, in words beginning with an "m", Western singers are apt to stress the vowel following the "m" rather than the "m" itself, whereas in qawwali, the "m" will usually be held, producing a muted tone. Also in qawwali, there is no distinction between what is known as the chest voice and the head voice (the different areas that sound will resonate in depending on the frequency sung). Rather, qawwals sing very loudly and forcefully, which allows them to extend their chest voice to much higher frequencies than those used in Western singing, even though this usually causes a more noisy or strained sound than what would be acceptable in the West.