Sufi music of India and Pakistan

Sound, Context
and meaning in Qawwali
Regula Burckhardt Qureshi

This edition includes a compact disc

containing sixty minutes of Qawwali music

The University of Chicago Press

Chicago and London

Contents

List of plates
List of tables
Lut of examples
The chosen repertoire
Preface to the 1995 edition
Preface
Terminology, transliteration and translation
Music notation: legend
Introduction The Qawwali experience and ethnomusicological questions
A What is Qawwali?
Looking for tools
c An abstract model and a concrete procedure
D The ethnographic domain of Qawwali
I

The performance idiom: Qawwali music

I

II
3

vii
viii

xi
xii
xiii
xvii
xviii
I
I

6
10

13
17

The Qawwali repertoire

A The songs
The adjunct items
The Qawwali musical structure
A Qawwali as North Indian music
The distinctive features of Qawwali
c A Qawwali song model
D Variation in the choice of sequencing

19
19
38
46
46

The performance context: the Qawwali occasion

77

The background
A The belief system behind Qawwali
The textual message of Qawwali
c Sufi shrines and Qawwali
D The hereditary performers of Qawwali
The structure of the Qawwali occasion
A A n ethnographic overview
The Qawwali concept: an assembly for listening and a
royal court of saints
c The proper setting for Qawwali
D The proper procedure for Qawwali
The social and economic dimensions

58
65
72

79
79
83
88
96
103
103
106
108
115
128

vi

Contents
III

The performance process: the Qawwali event

Introducing performance analysis

A The task
The performer's vantage point
c The context-music interaction
6 Observing the Qawwali performance
A Performance 1: The Chilla Mahfil
Performance 2: Ecstatic arousal in the Hujra Mahfil
7 Explaining the Qawwali performance
A Assessing the setting
Assessing the situation
C Building the performance
8 Analysing the Qawwali performance
A Semantic referents
The structural perspective: referents of status and identity
C The process perspective: referent of spiritual state
and its intensification
D The performance perspective: referent of selective focus
Summary: the total process
Conclusion
A Returning to the basic questions about Qawwali
Musical code and music-maker
c Qawwali and ethnomusicological analysis
Notes
Qawwali musicalvocabulary
Glossary
Bibliography
Oral sources
Musical sources
Index
Compact disc: see inside back cover

133
135
135
136
140
143
144
175
187
191
193
208
208
209
214
222
225
228
228
229
231
234
236
242
247
257
260
263