Over relentless handclapping, harmonium drones, and tablas, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and his nine-man "Party" work up a trance swirl of escalating vocal fireworks. Singers repeat lines with growing intensity, each repetition extracting more joy from the words as Nusrat's scat-like improvisations weave around and about bringing the whole crew back to unison chant melody. They sing qawwali: devotional music drawing on religious and romantic texts of Sufi poetry. If Islam tends towards the dogmatic and paternalistic, Sufism represents a contrary esoteric impulse: a mystical immersion into the gentler more feminine side of spirituality and the search for direct personal experience of God.
This music captures the ecstatic revelation of spiritual truth, and is therefore very special indeed.
Oddi wrth y brawd
unveiling one to oneself
2 comments:
This looks pretty interesting.
Thank you.
Cheers.
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