‘Sufisaints bring people together. And so do the musicians and singers who sing Qawwali, an Indian localised form of Sufimusic,’ said Haji Mohammed Idris of the Qutbi Brothers, one of India’s most ...

Between 1947 and the early 1950s, much of the music played on the state-owned Radio Pakistan comprised Urdu film songs, some Western popular and Eastern classical music, ghazals and patriotic ditties.

The Chishti order, the most prominent Sufi brotherhood in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan, has long celebrated the normativity of qawwali as an expression of divine love. Annemarie Schimmel has noted ...

MEE speaks to Asif Hasnain, co-founder of The Dream Journey music project, on how debates over Islam and culture have shaped Pakistan's music scene (From left, foreground) Asif Hasnain and other ...

One of the characteristics of the modern weltanschauung (worldview) is to identify religion as distinct from culture. Islam, and Islam in Pakistan, doesn’t escape this bifurcation either. One popular ...

Are newer incarnations of qawwali straying away from traditions of this revered musical form and, even if they are, does it matter? I only have qawwali to blame for my first and solitary act of ...

From mushairas and qawwali parties to Pakistani soaps and Urdu poetry on TV, the language is making a quiet comeback with a new generation, new modes and new mediums. It's a crisp winter evening and a ...

The qawwali, a musical genre closely associated with Islamic Sufi tradition, has evolved over the generations to include not just devotion, but romance, comedy and even social commentary in its fold.

Mumbai: Zubair Azmi, director of Urdu Markaz, a literary and cultural organisation promoting Urdu language, calls Bhindi Bazaar “the cultural hub of erstwhile Bombay.” It is where the who’s who of ...