Sufi Music of India and Pakistan Sound, Context, and Meaning

by Qureshi, Regula Burckhardt

• ISBN13: 9780195979107
• ISBN10: 0195979109
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book is a ground-breaking study of cultural performance. Specifically it is about Qawwali, conventionally understood as the music of Sufism in South Asia. One of the most highly regarded scholars in ethnomusicology, Regula Qureshi comes with a unique set of tools to bear on this study.

Table of Contents

List of plates	vii
List of tables	viii
List of examples	x
The chosen repertoire	xi
Preface to the 2005 Edition	xiii
Preface to the 1995 Edition	xv
Preface to the First Edition	xvii
Terminology, transliteration and translation	xxi
Music notation: legend	xxii
Introduction: The Qawwali experience and ethnomusicological questions	1	(1)
What is Qawwali?	1	(5)
Looking for tools	6	(4)
An abstract model and a concrete procedure	10	(3)
The ethnographic domain of Qawwali	13	(4)
I. The performance idiom: Qawwali music	17	(60)
The Qawwali repertoire	19	(27)
The songs	19	(19)
The adjunct items	38	(8)
The Qawwali musical structure	46	(31)
Qawwali as North Indian music	46	(12)
The distinctive features of Qawwali	58	(7)
A Qawwali song model	65	(7)
Variation in the choice of sequencing	72	(5)
II. The performance context: the Qawwali occasion	77	(56)
The background	79	(24)
The belief system behind Qawwali	79	(4)
The textual message of Qawwali	83	(5)
Sufi shrines and Qawwali	88	(8)
The hereditary performers of Qawwali	96	(7)
The structure of the Qawwali occasion	103	(30)
An ethnographic overview	103	(3)
The Qawwali concept: an assembly for listening and a royal court of saints	106	(2)
The proper setting for Qawwali	108	(7)
The proper procedure for Qawwali	115	(13)
The social and economic dimensions	128	(5)
III. The performance process: the Qawwali event	133	(95)
Introducing performance analysis	135	(8)
The task	135	(1)
The performer's vantage point	136	(4)
The context--music interaction	140	(3)
Observing the Qawwali performance	143	(65)
Performance 1: The Chilla Mahfil	144	(31)
Performance 2: Ecstatic arousal in the Hujra Mahfil	175	(12)
Explaining the Qawwali performance
Assessing the setting	187	(4)
Assessing the situation	191	(2)
Building the performance	193	(15)
Analysing the Qawwali performance	208	(20)
Semantic referents	208	(1)
The structural perspective: referents of status and identity	209	(5)
The process perspective: referent of spiritual state and its intensification	214	(8)
The performance perspective: referent of selective focus	222	(3)
Summary: the total process	225	(3)
Conclusion	228	(6)
Returning to the basic questions about Qawwali	228	(1)
Musical code and music-maker	229	(2)
Qawwali and ethnomusicological analysis	231	(3)
Notes	234	(2)
Qawwali musical vocabulary	236	(6)
Glossary	242	(5)
Bibliography	247	(10)
Oral sources	257	(3)
Musical sources	260	(3)
Index	263