Qawwali

Qawwali is the devotional song tradition of South Asian Sufi Islam, performed at shrines and concerts by an ensemble of 7-10 men: one or two lead singers, a chorus that hand-claps the rhythm, two harmoniums and a pair of tabla or dholak. Pieces last 10-40 minutes, building from a hushed introductory alap to ecstatic climaxes as the tempo accelerates and the lead singer improvises new variations on the central poem. Lyrics mix Urdu, Punjabi, Persian and occasionally Hindi, addressing the divine through erotic and intoxicated metaphor — 'beloved,' 'wine,' 'drunkenness' all carrying spiritual readings. The goal is the audience's hal, a state of spiritual absorption ideally bordering on trance.

Qawwali is usually traced to the 13th-century Sufi poet Amir Khusrow in Delhi, who is credited with fusing Persian musical practice with the rhythmic patterns of Indian classical music. For seven centuries the form lived primarily as a ritual at Sufi shrines, especially the dargah of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi. In the 1970s Pakistani vocalist Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan adapted qawwali for concert stages and recordings, retaining its length and ritual structure while making it legible to international audiences; he became the genre's global ambassador through collaborations with Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack and Michael Brook before his death in 1997. His nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has continued the family tradition, while older masters such as the Sabri Brothers preserved more traditional shrine practice.

The first three to five minutes of a qawwali are quiet harmonium introductions and exploratory vocal lines; the tabla and chorus enter only when the lead is ready, and a single hand clap on beat 1 cues the actual song to begin. Each couplet of the poem is sung multiple times, with the singer adding more ornament, higher pitches and more rhythmic urgency on every pass. Don't cut the piece short — the long arc from contemplative opening to ecstatic peak is the form. The hand-clap chorus often shouts encouragement back to the lead, a built-in feedback loop between performer and listener.

For a long-form introduction, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's 'Allah Hoo Allah Hoo' demonstrates the full arc from alap to ecstatic climax over 30 minutes. For a shorter entry, 'Mast Mast' (1990) — covered into the mainstream by Massive Attack's remix on the 'Dead Man Walking' soundtrack — is canonical. The Sabri Brothers' 'Ya Habib' is the standard-bearer for the more traditional shrine style.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan recorded with Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder on the 1995 soundtrack to 'Dead Man Walking' and supplied vocals to A.R. Rahman's 1995 Indian film 'Bombay,' bridging Hollywood, Bollywood and the Sufi shrine in a single 18-month stretch. The word 'qawwali' is from the Arabic 'qaul' (utterance, statement) — originally referring to the recitation of the sayings of the Prophet and the Sufi saints.