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Sufis at the Barbican
Posted on September 30th, 2011 in Songlines Blog by Simon Broughton.
It was called The Ecstatic Journey, and while it didn’t live up to the headbanging rave the Time Out preview suggested, it was a transcendental evening with four tastes of Sufi music from around the Islamic world.
First from Indonesia, Syubbanul Akhyar, a group and a style of music heard in the UK for the first time. They entered very elegantly in rose-coloured smocks and bowed – to a great round of applause. ‘Salaam Aleikhum,’ they said politely and a woman to my right immediately responded ‘Wa Aleikhum Salaam’ and took a photo on her phone at the same time. The music comes from the Yemeni inhabitants of Indonesia, descended from the Arab traders who first brought Islam. The small hand drums and large barrel drums are Yemeni instruments, but added are the violin and flute – particularly the latter sounding so Indonesian and like the Sundanese popular music from the west of the island. Their closing number, a catchy tune about the Prophet Mohammed, went down particularly well.
The Fakirs of Gorbhanga are Baul musicians from Bengal, north-east India. While the Indonesians looked like clean-living respectable young men, the Bauls had the hoary wisdom of old village minstrels. The singers would sing and play their lutes and spin front of stage as the rest of the band gave a supporting bed of percussion behind. While the Indonesians were exquisitely perfumed, there was spiritual guts in this music.
Next the amazing Sain Zahoor, who was welcomed like a star. We featured Zahoor’s amazing story in Songlines #36 and he’s a charismatic presence singing into his plucked ektara festooned with coloured tassels. He’s a one-man band on his own, but has a small group of flute, harmonium and percussion behind him. The dialogue of Zahoors sandpapery voice and silky flute is particularly memorable. He thanked all the great saints like Nizamuddin, Shah Abdul Latif and Bulleh Shah who brought Islam to South Asia and then sang a song of devotion to them. Quite wonderful, but rather cut short to rush on the final group.
While Sain Zahoor simply exudes a sense of mystery and spiritual power, with Marouane Hajji and his group from Morocco, it was a bit like the Muslim equivalent of Jehovah’s Witnesses coming knocking at your door. They should have been programmed the other way round. The music was beautiful – Arab Andalous in character, with violin, oud and flute – but it brought you back down rather than taking you somewhere else as Sain Zahoor did. He’s on tour in the UK for the next few days.
Qawwali Sufis straight out of Afghanistan tour the UK
Posted on April 30th, 2009 in World Music by Songlines.
With Home Office strictures on artists travelling to the UK becoming more severe, the British Council in Afghanistan increasingly fearful of associating with musicians and a long list of recent visa and entry problems for world music artists coming to the UK, it’s impressive they are coming at all. But despite having to travel to Delhi to obtain their visas, the Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawali Group will play two shows on May 4 and 5 at the Tricycle in Kilburn, London as part of the theatre’s The Great Game: Afghanistan season celebrating Afghan arts and culture.
Qawwali is the devotional Islamic music and song most commonly associated in the West with neighbouring Pakistan, thanks to the late, great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan who dared to expose the style to Western collaboration. A steady stream of Pakistani and Indian qawwali groups has followed in his footsteps – but Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawali Group is a rarer opportunity to hear an Afghan qawwali group.
They have been performing together for the last 30 years, have toured Russia, Tajikistan, India and Afghanistan, and were discovered by festival organiser Zahra Qadir playing in a Sufi house in Kabul in 2006.
Prior to the May 4 show at 4pm there is also a film screening as part of The Great Game: Afghanistan Film Festival of the film Breaking the Silence: Music in Afghanistan. Filmed in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Taliban, it explores the moments when music first returned to the streets of Kabul, with footage of musicians and singers (including female singer Naghma) who had long been silent. Director Simon Broughton (Songlines’ editor-in-chief) will be at the screening for a Q&A session about what they experienced.
Ahmad Sham Sufi Qawali Group will also be touring Scotland, playing in the CatStrand in New Galloway as part of Dumfries and Galloway 30th Arts Festival, Knockengorroch World Music Festival in Dumfries and Galloway and in Glasgow.
www.tricycle.co.uk/afghanistan
