The art of qawwali, as with most of the great Asian musical and literary traditions, is transmitted orally ... The vehicle of music is used to bring one closer to the experience of the inner truth. The qawwal will dwell on certain words to give them a wider context creating great depth in the apparently simple language of certain Sufi texts. He will often repeat a phrase or sentence indicating both the obvious and hidden content by emphasizing or ruminating upon particular words and syllables, taking the audience into the discovery of hitherto obscure meanings. Thus, mundane objects are embued with deeper meaning — a spinning wheel becomes the wheel of life
- Robert H. Browning Founder and former Executive Director of the World Music Institute
What is Qawwali?
Qawwali is a venerable yet refreshing musical tradition that dates back to the late 13th century. The word qaul refers to an "utterance (of the prophet)" and the first Qawwals (qawwali artists) repeated these quals by making them the subject matter of their qawwalis. Famous among such artists was a man named Amir Khusro.
More than 700 years since Amir Khusro composed the famous qaul ‘Man Kunto Maula’, Riyaaz Qawwali envisions modernizing the genre for today's audience, while staying true to the ethos of qawwali. In this regard Riyaaz idolizes Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who took semi-classical qawwali to new heights of popularity in both the Hindustani Shastriya Sangeet as well as the World Music circles through the 1980s and the 1990s.
Riyaaz Qawwali hopes to take this niche tradition of Sufiana Kalaam and expand its reaches by introducing newer poets to traditional compositions and modernizing the sound while keeping authentic elements, all in efforts to reach new audiences.
The songs which constitute the qawwali repertoire are mostly in Urdu and Punjabi (almost equally divided between the two), although there are several songs in Brajbhasha and Persian. The poetry is implicitly understood to be spiritual in its meaning and the central themes are love, devotion and longing (for the Divine).
Qawwalis are classified by their content into several categories:
Hamd - praise for Allah
Naat - praise of the Prophet Muhammad
Manqabat - praise of either Imam Ali or one of the Sufi saints
Marsiya - dirge lamenting the death of much of Imam Husayn's family in the Battle of Karbala
Kafi - devotional poem themed around heroic and great romantic tales from the folkfore, often used as a metaphor for mystical truths, and spiritual longing characterized by a musical refrain that sets a mood much like in a Ghazal
Munadjaat - song where the singer displays his gratefulness to Allah through a variety of linguistic techniques
Ghazal - poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain. Although the ghazal is most prominently a form of Persian and Urdu poetry, today it is found in the poetry of many languages.
In an attempt to modernize the sound and reach newer audiences, Riyaaz Qawwali started 'Project Kishti'. Therein, Riyaaz also performs the following in a Qawwali format:
Bhajan - generalized religious devotional song integral but not limited to the bhakti movement
Shabad - hymn or paragraph or sections that appear in The Guru Granth Sahib (holy text of Sikhism)
Qawwali is a musical tradition that dates back close to 700 years. Qawwali come from the root word /qaul/, which is an "utterance." Qawwali took its origins under Amir Khusro. It has been a musical tradition which has stayed relatively small, until the 1980s. Under the leadership of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, qawwali reached new heights of popularity. He was able to take a tradition that was semi-classical and hundereds of years old and modernize it.
Qawwali has seen a decrease in visibility after Nusrat's death. It is Riyaaz Qawwali's vision to properly, while staying true to qawwali also modernize the genre for today's audience. Riyaaz Qawwali hopes to take this niche tradition of Sufiana Kalaam and expand its reaches by introducing newer poets to traditional compositions and modernizing the sound while keeping authentic elements, all in efforts to reach new audiences.
