Qawwali as a Transcultural Music Genre

        Though the roots of Qawwali got their place in the sub-continent, yet it has penetrated in other cultures of the West. The art of Qawwali is gaining popularity in India and Pakistan and many Qawwalis have become popular here. Western diasporic musical renditions retain certain significations which can be called the Sufi sublime. The Sufi sublime is an imaginary term informed by Western ideas about Islam, on the one hand, and strategies of marketing outfits and powerhouses of cultural production, on the other. In the wake of rising forms of religious extremism—Christian, Hindu, and Muslim included—intolerance of various shades has been seeping into societies worldwide; in places where staid forms of rationalism have been dominant, populations have recently been inundated by a litany of other “isms”: tribalism, nationalism, and fundamentalism among them. Transforming the secret of Sufi monasteries and shrines in public circles led to the emergence of the style of popular poetry featuring separate conventions on music and song content. Popular poetry has lost its usefulness as a transformational meditation technique and while maintaining religion, they also acquired the qualities of entertainment.  As for the presentation of Qawwali in the continent of North America  as a transcultural musical genre, Leonard & Sakata  in their article, “Indo-Muslim Music, Poetry, and Dance in North America”, describe that we are particularly interested in the successful establishment of Qawwali, a tradition of music based on clear Islamic and Sufi beliefs in North America. It is not yet locally rooted, but it is clearly non-Muslim, non-South Asian, and reaching out. It is extremely popular internationally among young audiences. At the same time, there has been a marked decline in the patronage of Qawwali by the first generation of South Asian Muslims. They reckon that the Muslims living there are serious about promoting their culture and that Qawwali is an important means of expressing their culture, indigenous poetry and temperament.

         Preaching of Sufism started from Baghdad, Iraq and spread to Persia, Pakistan, North Africa, Central Asia and Muslim Spain. Sufism has produced a large part of poetry in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi and even Bengali, from which the genre of Sufi music, lyrics and Qawwali has emerged. Sufi poetry has merged with a variety of local music cultures and created a rainbow of change in some parts of the world and under ages. Despite the religious tendency towards music from wholehearted acceptance to complete rejection, the doctrinal council of Islamic mysticism remained in the name of Qawwali, a popular source of happiness in colonial Punjab. Qawwals presented mystical poetry fluid in Persian, Hindi, and Urdu (in this order in terms of prestige) replacing individual and group segments, which is characterized by repetition and correction. Qawwali music was an offering of mystical poetry, which awakened mystical emotions such as joy in a gathering of listeners with spiritual needs that were diverse and changing. Qawwali event structure such as opportunities, setting, seating arrangements for Sufi devotees and artists procedures, listing processes and answers of gathered devotees. It was also very important to give birth to happiness at the time of Samaa.

Qawwali was considered to be one of the best sources of vitality in that period. In the mid 1940s and in the 1980's, poetry was a secular, romantic genre, the intelligence and artistry of a singer-poet convincing his beloved. With the success of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and AR Rehman, the genre enjoyed a return in the 2000s, but in the form of a 'dargah'. What we see in this second cinematic incarnation gender is not romance but the religiosity of Muslim men. The phrase 'item numbers' of the last decade is being erased. Rituals of gender companionship were once associated with 'classical' rhetoric. . In some places it is portrayed as a means of appeasing religious sentiments and in others it is a reflection of social issues, politics, relationships and psychology. Genre of Qawwali in India is given a level playing field among the other genres of music and with the same diligence, ingenuity and modern technique in its presentation. Qawwali would be given prominence in Bollywood movies from the very beginning and with the passage of time, innovations came in its presentation, such as in its poetry and also in the use of musical instruments.