Qawwali music: From dargahs to reels
Delhi-based documentary filmmaker, researcher and writer Yousuf Saeed looks at how the depiction of qawwali genre of music has evolved in Bollywood
How has Bollywood changed qawwalis, one of the oldest sub-continental art forms still extant today?
That is the question that Delhi-based documentary filmmaker, researcher and writer Yousuf Saeed is answering through his database of qawwalis in Hindi language cinema. The director of a documentary about Sufi poet Amir Khusrow’s heritage called Boojh Sakay To Boojh (Doordarshan, 1997) and of a docudrama called Khusrau Darya Prem Ka (for the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, 2013) wanted to see how Muslim devotional themes, especially qawwali music, have been explored and depicted in Indian cinema, specifically Bollywood.
The database started out with 250 songs in 2021 with funding support from the India Foundation for the Arts in Bangalore, and now the number has swelled to 800 and counting. It includes music from movies listed chronologically from 1936, all the way to the present day. The archive can be found at cineqawwali.in.
Saeed has worked alone on the project, taking the help of books such as Dhuno ki Yatra by Pankaj Rag, and Bollywood Melodies: A History by Ganesh Anantharaman. A large personal collection of DVDs and video cassettes have become the archival material he needed. Online, he looked at websites such as HindiGeetMala and MySwar. He has also spoken to scholars who have been working on Sufi music, including musician, poet, scholar and Delhi University professor Dr Madan Gopal Singh. The website for the project went live earlier this year.
“It was difficult to find the songs, because there is no master list of movie songs available,” says Saeed. “You can’t even tell from the names, so one has to develop one’s own definition of cinema qawwali, to some extent.”
On the website, Saeed says that in Hindi language cinema, qawwalis are often “designed as songs sung by a group of clapping men or women (or both) wearing Islamic clothing, especially decorated crooked caps, while sitting down on a stage or public platform,” along with certain gestures. Musically, it is generally accompanied by dholak, tabla and harmonium, and have a certain taal (beat) and theka (rhythmic phrase). “Another important pointer is the presence of a kind of dialogue between the singers, or the singer and audience,” he adds.
The first movie to have such a song that Saeed identified was Miss Frontier Mail, featuring Fearless Nadia, the famous stuntwoman of early-era Hindi films. He adds that earlier movies may have also featured them – such as Talash-e Haq from 1935 – but the recordings have not yet been located, or are lost.
There are also graphs on the website, which show the number of songs in each year, and the playback singers who sang them – Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle had hugely popular songs as do Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and Kailash Kher. Composers who repeatedly worked with the qawwali form include Roshan and Naushad in the 1940s, OP Nayyar, Ravi and Madan Mohan in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, Laxmikant-Pyarelal in the ’80s, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy in late 1990s and, of course, AR Rahman.
But the history of qawwali music is much older than any depiction of it onscreen.
“Qawwali is a style of singing that is performed in a set of related genres,” says Dr Katherine Butler Schofield, Head of Department of Music at King’s College London. “The style is associated with a devotional repertoire performed in Sufi dargahs, or shrines, since at least the time of Amir Khusrow.”
The great poet, scholar and musician Amir Khusrow, who was a disciple of Sufi saint Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, is largely credited with developing the kind of repertoire that gets sung by qawwals today. Written in Persian and Hindavi, the songs have been passed down for centuries, both orally and in writing.
The style is characterised by strong leading vocals accompanied by a tabla, a harmonium, a chorus with tarana (or nonsense syllables), and handclaps. The lyrics are precise and clear, and the music builds towards a climax to send the listener into a state of ecstasy. Qawwali is, therefore, a musical pathway that attempts to achieve union with the Divine.
That’s not the only significance of the tradition. “Qawwali was a space for people of all backgrounds to come together – rich or poor, Hindu, Muslim or any other religion, creating a parallel, more democratic space,” says Professor Madan Gopal Singh. “You can understand the art only if you understand the community it builds up.”
In modern times, qawwals often identify as belonging to certain gharanas, which are schools of musical styles, usually identified with the place in which they originated – such as Delhi, Lucknow and Gwalior.
“As the Mughal period declined, many court performers travelled to other parts of the subcontinent, establishing their own schools of music, which became the various gharanas,” says Pakistani musician Wajiha Naqvi, who is currently a doctoral researcher at King’s College, London. “The oldest is the Qawwal bacchon, which started with Khusrow himself in Delhi.”
Qawwals and khyal singers were also some of the earliest recorded artists in India. In 1904, the Gramophone Company of India recorded sitarist Ustad Imdad Khan’s Sohini Qawwali in Calcutta – and the recordings of singer Gauhar Jaan are still popular.
As qawwalis appear on the silver screen through the decades, the ways in which they were used starts to change. By studying the list he has put together, Saeed has reached a curious conclusion.
“As time goes by, qawwalis in Hindi language films become more and more associated with religiosity,” he says. “Earlier, they would be shown in all sorts of situations, such as family picnics.”
The change indicates that slowly, qawwalis became associated with an Islamic stereotype, rather than a style of singing found in everyday pan-Indian culture. The specific devotional purpose is often repurposed as a metaphor, usually for non-religious situations.
This generally includes a moment of crisis (Al-Madad Maula from Mangal Pandey: The Rising and Kun Faya Kun from Rockstar, for example), or a yearning for an unavailable beloved. Dr Schofield points out that even item numbers utilise this new framework: “Chhaiya Chhaiya from Dil Se is based on qawwali music, and the film itself is about an impossible but all-encompassing love – just like Sufi ideas of the love between a devotee and the Divine Other.”
Under the influence of movies such as Mughal-E-Azam, Amar Akbar Anthony and Umrao Jaan, qawwalis have also come to be associated with courtesans. While some courtesans were known to have been taught qawwali music, and some were even expert practitioners, traditional qawwals are usually all-male groups. A recent example is the 2022 movie Gangubai Kathiawadi, which features a qawwali performance by a woman, who is dressed as a courtesan, at a moment of crisis and sacrifice of love.
Post 1990, Saeed notes that directors started calling it Sufi music rather than qawwali, and it starts acquiring an exotic flavour. “In Jodhaa Akbar, the picturisation of Khwaja Mere Khwaja shows whirling dervishes dancing, which is not an image from Indian Sufism,” says Saeed. The reason? “Bollywood is going international, and starting to cater to non-Indian, and non-resident Indian audiences,” he says.
Saeed hopes that his list will help to preserve and showcase an important cultural tradition in our country. He is compiling it, along with essays and writings, in a book called Qawwali in Bombay Cinema.
“Qawwali is a culmination of many cultural practices in our country coming together – all Sufi shrines are proof of this plurality,” he says. “The list shows how this practice is being continued today.”
Not all practitioners feel that the changes brought about by this continuation is positive. Sufi and Classical Indian musician Dhruv Sangari likens it to cultural appropriation of oral intangible heritage, as qawwali is decontextualized further from its origins.
“Bollywood has flattened qawwali into one version, and only big producers and production houses are benefitting,” he says. “I’ve seen people fitting qawwalis into 1-minute reels (Instagram’s short videos feature); this way, qawwali is being made into content for the free market.”
As a practitioner, Sangari and his team strike the balance by keeping the devotional and the commercial separate. “In the more commercial gigs, we sing popular compositions, and we don’t call them Sufi,” he says.
Meanwhile, some practitioners, such as Texas-based Sonny Mehta, are expanding the repertoire of qawwali in a different direction – by deepening its spiritual ties internationally. Mehta and his group, Riyaaz Qawwali, have teamed up with gospel singers, the Jones Family Choir, to sing medleys.
“As an immigrant child, I grew up listening to both a Western soundscape of black gospel music and qawwali,” says Mehta. “This collaboration is the bridging of these rich histories.”
He sees a commonality between the two forms: “The melodies, the rhythm, the powerful vocals and energy, the use of hand claps, and the purpose – to elevate the audience’s spirituality.”
Chennai-based writer and activist Shalini Maria Lawrence finds in qawwali a kind of special spiritual connection, especially with a form of music called gaana, performed by working class Dalit artists.
“As a Dalit Christian woman who lived in a working-class slum, I often attended qawwali performances at dargahs and never felt out of place,” she says. “It’s such a powerful way to unite people across religions – especially when governments are trying to ban interfaith marriage, conversions and so on.”
Despite the qawwali’s deep relationship with feature film, Mehta agrees with Sangari that all evolving technology -- including short-form videos -- is not suitable for the art form. It’s hard to fit a 20-minute-long introductory piece into a 30-second reel or Tiktok. But this doesn’t mean that qawwali won’t endure.
“This is not an art that’s frozen in time like museum pieces,” says Mehta. “As long as there is a balance between tradition and innovation, qawwali has a bright future. That’s because it’s a medium that lends itself very easily to a human soul.”
Rush Mukherjee is a writer based in Kolkata.
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