Musical Ethnography Review On Qawwali Sufism “For the Sufis of India and Pakistan, the Qawwali songs are ‘food for the soul’, a means for attaining union with God, the ecstatic culmination of mystical experience” (Page i). Upon opening Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, context and meaning in Qawwali by Regula Burchhardt Qureshi, one may find themselves asking, “What is Qawwali?” Luckily for the reader, that very question is the title of the first section in Qureshi’s meticulously pieced together musical ethnography. The preface and introduction seamlessly introduce you into the world of Sufism, a devotional assembly of Islamic mysticism. More specifically, they introduce you to Qawwali Sufism, which is an Indian genre as well as a musical performance with the purpose of arousing mystical love—union with God—through the ritualistic listening of music, or sama. Rooted in North India, the genre shares characteristics with light, classical Hindustani and Pakistani music. With these facts among others, my fears of unfamiliarity with the subject were gone. The preface and introduction not only introduce the reader to Qureshi’s highly organized style of writing, but also prepares you to cope with the vast amount of information the book is expected to withhold. The preface and introduction also contain some valuable information pertaining to the subject material. She warns the reader that the book is written for the musically literate, and an ethnomusicological approach as well as an anthropological approach will be used to incorporate the music’s context with an analysis of its musical sound. Her purpose is not to teach the reader how to produce Qawwali music in performance, but to allow the reader to identify and distinguish it from other musical genres as well as understand how the music speaks to its listeners and they, in turn, affect the performance, thus understanding Qawwali music. Qureshi does a brilliant job, and it would be treachery to deny her of achieving her goal. As mentioned in her thesis, she speaks of the relationship between the music performed and the audience—the key to understanding Qawwali music and a theme central to the book. Qawwali Sufism proceeds based on the audience’s reactions to the music; for example, if a verse of the poem being sung arouses a listener’s emotions (maybe to the point of ecstasy), that line will have to be repeated at higher and different pitches until the reactions subside. It is in this way that the audience determines how the music will progress. This aspect brings baggage: A ‘meaning of the text’ that goes beyond the scope of musical analysis, forcing any ethonomusigraphic study of Qawwali to delve deeply into the background and context of the music. Qureshi’s balanced and ordered presentation of the contextual and musical dimensions is what made the book shine. The large amount of material presented never felt overwhelming. It read as clearly as a lab report, yet was written in eloquent English, making the subject material easy to understand. Sufi words were distinguished from the text through italicization and a dictionary of the words was provided in the back of the book. As far as the order goes, she first presents the musical repertoire of Qawwali songs, then everything relevant to the Qawwali ritual from oratory to the belief system itself. She details the social and economic relationships of the listeners and musicians, and lastly the specific rules governing the performance of and listening to Qawwali music. Each section informs and prepares you for the next, smoothly transiting from topic to topic until you reach her ultimate purpose: To explain and analyze Qawwali performances. The book was organized in the most detailed of ways so the reader could immediately find any desired section. There was a preface, introduction, and conclusion, and then three parts divided into eight chapters. The chapters in turn were divided into sections and then sub-sections. Within each was an underlying pattern: Most paragraphs were supported with a kind of graph or chart and/or pictures. In the 1st chapter, detailing the musical repertoire, musical examples were notated on common western staves, and then analyzed, with each section described underneath (e.g. “irregular 6-line strophe, fitted into asthayi-antara scheme” Page 21). The melody was provided in original Arabic, transliterated, and translated as well. Each song was introduced with an interpretation of its meaning and a brief history of its author or owner, both key aspects to the music. I was surprised to read how in depth the poetic analysis was; for a moment, I thought I was reading from a grammatical book rather than an ethnomusicological one. Quereshi named the rhyming scheme (usually AABA), syllabic pattern, and metric scheme. These provided the setup for the analysis of the song as the metric scheme and content of the poem determines the rhythm and formal structure of the song. In the latter chapters, she used “videographs” which show the melody line and each listener listed under it as to account for their actions at specific times during the melody. Through providing such a large amount of graphs, Qureshi guaranteed the understanding of each topic discussed and made each section read quickly. The performance and musical repertoire were not the only subjects that were detailed; Qureshi used an anthropological approach to study and present the historical account of Qawwali. Two aspects are the setting and purpose of all the various religious ceremonies, areas that took up an entire chapter and ranged from a Sufi’s cell room on a holy day to an entire temple complex for a saint’s death anniversary, or urs. Another aspect she went into great depths to explain is how Sufism is controversial, as it exists within Islam (a religion prohibiting musical practice) and how Sufis overcome the challenge. One result of the controversy as well as a combination of Hindustani and Pakistani culture is a strict hierarchical system. The performers, or Qawwals, are of lowest status and virtually unrecognized by the audience; in other words, the performer is “incidentally” a contributor to the performance. Still, in reality, the performers do exist and have their own realm in Sufism. Another chapter is dedicated to this topic, detailing the financial aspect as well as the hereditary Qawwal system. And these topics are the tip of the iceberg. Qureshi thoroughly covers every realm and explains every niche of Qawwali music. However, there are some flaws with her musical ethnography. For starters, her dictionary was completely inadequate. I will admit there was a great number of terms in her dictionary, but many important words, even ones she commonly uses (such as urs, the death anniversary of a saint) were missing. Luckily, she made up for this flaw by often repeating the definition of Qawwali words. Other than this most obvious flaw, the book often became too organized in the latter four chapters, sounding exactly like a lab report. Qureshi would introduce each section and sub section with a rundown of how she will go about, rather than just getting to the point. Ironically, her book was so well organized already that this was completely unnecessary and she would often get very technical and wordy in these mini-introductions. Lastly, in the latter chapters as well, she would occasional repeat herself one time too many. For example, she would repeat an aspect in detail that she spent entire previous chapter discussing—this became tedious to read. Ultimately, other than these minor flaws, her book was very well written, organized and a most intriguing and informative read. “The Qawwali performer must be able to repeat, amplify, rearrange, or even omit any part of the song text in immediate response to the changing requirements of his listeners” (page 63). Such a situation provides a rather hard challenge to overcome when writing a musical ethnography for westerners. It is one thing to explain music from the point of an insider to westerners in western terminology, but with Sufism it is not that easy. The music is so unpredictable and beyond the scope of musical analysis that every aspect must be accounted for. With anything less, a Qawwali study would be incomplete and misunderstood. Qureshi wrote a musical ethnography that not only fulfilled this requirement, but she wrote a highly organized, sophisticated book that was surprisingly as fun and easy to read as it was educational. If ever you wanted to learn about Sufi music, or more specifically of the Qawwali genre, this book would be more than enough to make you a casual expert.