1This paper stems from the idea that when people migrate, they carry along whatever reminds them of home and homeland, including languages, foods, traditions, customs, arts, poetry and also popular music, which then become markers of their unique cultural identity. The two case studies this paper brings to the fore pertain to two popular musical genres, the Bhangra and the Qawwali, both of which followed South Asian populations to the United Kingdom in the second half of the twentieth century. The Bhangra is most known for being a popular folk dance from the Indian Punjab, while the Qawwali, originally, is the music of Muslim saints and Sufis. Studying both genres, not merely as mediums of artistic and cultural expression but as historical processes, enriches our understanding of the socio-cultural inclusion of South Asians in contemporary British society. Indeed, little attention has been paid to the socio-cultural inclusion of South Asian populations, while their political and economic inclusion in countries like the United Kingdom has been studied extensively.
2In this line of thought, Tariq Modood notes that “while the history of immigration, notably from the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean, and the formation of ‘post-immigration groups’ in the 20th century have been variously explored, recent patterns and new formations of cultural diversity are only beginning to be considered” (Modood, Dobbernack and Meer 13). The focus on the ‘cultural’ dimension of these ‘post-immigration groups’, the role of performed arts and music in the formation of diasporic identities, and the importance that minority groups accord to the practice and transmission of various cultural markers remains insufficiently documented. A similar point is made by Rolf Lidskog who writes that in today’s world characterised by migration, transnational networks, and global flows, as well as by a reorientation of migration and integration policies, the conditions for identity-formation are changing and music continues to be an important way for immigrants and refugees to negotiate and develop their identities in their new setting (Lidskog 24-26). Such observations support the idea that the role of arts and music needs to be researched further.
3Moreover, even within the literature dedicated to the study of arts and music, the study of South Asian musical genres has received little attention, a point made by Graham Welch and Gerry Farrell who write that “despite the apparent richness and diversity of South Asian music in Britain, these South Asian musical genres have surprisingly received little attention in the literature of ethnomusicology or even, music education” (Farrell, Welch et al. 51-53). They add that the work of Paul Oliver on Black music in Britain, Sabita Banerji and Gerd Baumann on Bhangra, and Baily on Qawwali in Bradford and music in three British Muslim cities are some notable exceptions. To this list, the names of Richard Henry Lightman and Gurdeep John Singh Khabra must be added as both conducted their doctoral research on Bhangra’s performance, production and propagation in Britain. Finally, the ethnomusicologist and scholar Regula Qureshi has done some remarkable research on the Qawwali in Pakistan and Canada.
- 1 Used for the sake of simplicity, here people refers to minority groups, communities, diasporas.
4With the above in view, this paper endeavours to situate the Bhangra and the Qawwali on the contemporary British cultural and musical arena, working from the hypothesis that the position of popular musical genres informs us on the position of the people1 to whom that music belongs because when people thrive, their music also thrives. Furthermore, many potentially ripe insights could be derived from comparative studies of diasporic arts and music, studies that would cast fresh light on how various South Asian diasporas relate to the home and the host countries and how progressive socio-cultural assimilation takes place over the course of time.
5In contemporary history, the Bhangra appears as an inclusive genre that has thrived as a secular medium of expression in Punjab, avoiding any musical or lyrical reference to religion or faith. Relatedly, Richard Henry Lightman notes that the “Bhangra is a music that emanates from a secular folk root … the language and harvest roots of Bhangra provided the defining cultural parameters but did not exclude other cultures or maintain exclusivity” (Lightman 95). Indeed, Punjab was an extremely diverse province with Sikh, Muslim and Hindu populations cohabiting and sharing its social and geographical landscape, a region where a shared language and Punjabi culture, with its many attributes, trumped the religious aspect of what it meant to be Punjabi. Over time, dances like Bhangra became a central component of a “Punjabi” identity especially in the diasporic context. It is also clear that the Bhangra is mostly associated to Punjab’s farmers and not to its landlords, and since it is also linked to the season of the harvests, it can be assumed that farmers celebrated good harvests by singing and dancing in various forms, even before the birth of the Bhangra, the Punjabi folk dance that the ethnomusicologist Gibb Schreffler has studied extensively as a Bhangra disciple himself.
6Schreffler notes that “music is one of many realms that distinguishes Punjab as a cultural area” and “music is a mode through which Punjabis display their identity” (“Vernacular Music and Dance of Punjab” 197). He adds that “Punjabi Bhangra borrows from geopolitical structures and colonising cultures exerting their influence and conventions on a locale” (“Migration Shaping Media” 33-35). Tracing the origins of the Bhangra back to the late nineteenth century, Schreffler believes that the dance may have been borrowed from the Pashtuns, adding that only a small geographic area in Punjab is linked to this dance (“Situating Bhangra Dance” 387). Bhangra’s performance, traditionally danced by men, is often evoked alongside another Punjabi dance called Giddha, which is traditionally danced by women. A notable feature of these folk dances, now widely recognised as part and parcel of contemporary Punjabi culture, are the colourful garbs and jewellery adorned by the dancers, and the musical instruments including many types of drums, some played with bare hands and others with wooden sticks.
7In comparison, the Qawwali makes use of more professional musical instruments like the sarangi, the harmonium and the tabla. Sung in the shrines of India’s Muslim saints and Sufis, Qawwalis are not songs, but poems and lyrical prose that praise God and commemorate the Saints and Sufis of Islam, and relatedly, qawwals are not mere professional “singers” of the Qawwali but eloquent speakers and storytellers groomed in the tradition (Narang & Matthews 166-167). Most qawwals take pride in claiming allegiance to renowned Sufis orders or gharanas (clans) like the famous Chishti order (160-161). In the past, Indian Muslim Sufis ”patronised and cherished" the Qawwali as an artistic form, enabling it to thrive in India’s Sufis seminaries or khanqas over the course of centuries. However, not everyone is allowed to ”sing” a Qawwali, this is why belonging to a Sufi order is mandatory for any aspiring qawwal.
8A crucial question that emerges here is whether the Bhangra and the Qawwali are too different to compare. The Bhangra is primarily a dance that is performed on a peculiar drum beat known as the dhol. It is usually, but not always, accompanied by Punjabi songs with a lexicon proper to Sikh Punjabi culture, however, the Bhangra can be performed on its own, solely with the drum beat. More importantly, the Bhangra is danced before being sung while the Qawwali is sung before being danced. The Bhangra is secular while the Qawwali is a Sufi musical genre. The Bhangra is essentially “Punjabi” while the Qawwali is not associated to any particular culture. The Bhangra is usually accompanied by Punjabi songs while the Qawwali can be sung in Urdu, Punjabi or even Persian. However, despite their peculiarity and apparent differences, the interest of the comparison lies in the fact that the circulation and transnational popularity of both genres has been remarkable. In order to nuance the discussion further, the next sections will shed light on how both genres have evolved in the second half of the twentieth century and what position they now occupy on the British cultural and musical scene.
9The Bhangra is an exceptionally fluid and flexible artistic form. This claim is supported by the fact that it has progressively grown into and morphed from a Punjabi folk dance into an urban choreographed form and then further into what we know today as the British Bhangra. While the Bhangra is adored and admired by South Asian populations across the globe, it also generates continued academic interest, yet another proof of its unwaning popularity. Gurdeep John Singh Khabra and Richard Henry Lightman have both explored the Bhangra from different perspectives. Virinder Kalra has studied the lyrics of Bhangra music and identified tropes of migration and loss in the 1970s-1980s music whereas Rajinder Dudrah has investigated the formation of diasporic identity through British Bhangra. Anjali Roy, on the other hand, has probed the impact of globalisation on the production of Bhangra music across the world.
10The Bhangra has many styles and forms while the British Bhangra, which is the focus of this paper, is a style of music prominently produced and enjoyed by members of British Asian communities (Indian and Pakistani Punjabis, but also broadly within Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi communities) across the United Kingdom (Lightman 208). Falu Bakrania explains that the term ”British Bhangra” denotes a musical form that “expresses a uniquely British Asian identity because of the way it mixes British Asian music” (Bakrania 2). Introduced to Bhangra music by her cousins, Bakrania notes that “the music came from a generation of South Asians living in England who “took on this British, Asian expression,” adding that she was immediately “attracted to the cultural creativity and the political consciousness that was being subtly expressed in the music” (DuShane). Schreffler began with the full development of Bhangra music in Britain in the early 1980s, after which the genre spread outwards to include other Western countries by the 1990s (Schreffler 2011). In the 1970s and 1980s, artists and bands like Apna Sangeet, Heera, DCS and Alaap were associated with the Bhangra music and in the 1990s, B21, DCS, Aman Hayer and RDB became the flagbearers of the genre (Khabra 26). In the early years, the music produced by these pioneer Bhangra bands often made use of the “rock band” paradigm and became popular, initially but not solely, through live performances at weddings or functions, as Khabra notes. Notably, Apna Sangeet, a Birmingham-based band born in 1983 and whose name literally translates into “our music,” made original Bhangra music that contributed to the creation and consolidation of a unique British Asian cultural identity the second generation could identify with (see illustration below). Many of these singers had come to Britain as children themselves, as was the case with one of Apna Sangeet’s lead vocalists Sardara Gill, hence the themes of identity and cultural hybridity, palpable in their artistic work, were also very personal to them, a subjectivity which made their songs relatable.
Figure 1 © Apna Style Boliyan by Apna Sangeet – Youtube.com
(Kulwant Bhamra is at the left, Sardara Gill at the right)
11All Punjabi music, however, was not Bhangra, even if most Punjabi music was referred to as Bhangra, or as Schreffler puts it, “glossed over with the label ‘Bhangra’” (“Music and Musicians in Punjab” 1). While Apna Sangeet (figure 1 above) played Punjabi music with Punjabi lyrics, bold Bhangra moves and the dhol (drum) beat, other bands like DCS, formed in 1981 and also Birmingham-based, tilted more towards Western music blended with Punjabi Bhangra, creating a music that was unlike that produced by Apna Sangeet. All this creativity contributed to diversifying the “Bhangra” genre further and giving it a “British” touch. Owing to the growing influence and popularity of these British Asian bands, by the end of the 1980s, when Banerji researched the genre in Britain, the British Bhangra had clearly emerged as music for the second generation of British Asians who identified with it and used it to negotiate their cultural identities (Khabra 136). Apna Sangeet’s blockbuster “Soho Road Utte” reminded that Punjab’s farms and fields were a thing of the past and that everything, be it courtship or friendship, was to unfold and come to life here, on Britain’s roads and streets.
- 2 Today, Ms. Bhamra is remembered for her contribution to the Bhangra and the Giddha but also as a pi (...)
12During his research in West London’s Punjabi community, Lightman was told that “by the 1970s, the Bhangra was a dance and music that involved both men and women” (Lightman 98). According to the bhangra producer Kuljit Bhamra, his mother Mohinder Kaur Bhamra, already a renowned singer of traditional Punjabi songs and ghazals, had danced the bhangra during a Sikh wedding, inviting other women to do the same as she said, “Dance, ladies dance. Clap your hands.”2 Moreover, Kuljit Bhamra informed Lightman that “Bhangra music resulted from the influence of disco music and the popularity of Saturday Night Fever (1977)” (Lightman 2022, 97).
- 3 The web site of the Bhangra Teams’ Forum has a thread that looks into the question of the Bhangra c (...)
13The Bhangra “chaal” or move was the product of the disco music and the drums, played against Punjabi folk music and in Britain, this dhol or drumbeat gave a “sonic identity to the new British Bhangra music” (Lightman 97). In Punjabi, “chaal” literally translates into moves or movement, and in the specific context of the Bhangra, “chaal” refers to a certain set of movements that accompany the drum beat. Prof. Nahar Singh’s 1988 book on Punjabi Folk Dances documents different Bhangra routines and even today, it is part of the training of professional dholis (drum players) to learn which move goes with which beat. However, in the diasporic context, the Bhangra came to be danced randomly and haphazardly alongside the drum beat, and while the Dhol Foundation mentions the “chaal” as part of its Bhangra training, it is only on UK posters that the word “chaal” appears at all.3 This validates Lightman’s claim that “the Bhangra ‘chaal’ or move was the product of the disco music and the drums,” besides, it is interesting to note that the Bhangra “chaal” that originated in Britain may have been utterly unknown to traditional dholis in Punjab. The Bhangra “chaal,” as it was appropriated by the second generation of South Asians growing up in Britain, represented an identity that was proper to them in that it was British-Asian, not just Asian or British, but both.
- 4 Since the Asian Underground is not the focus of this paper, I will therefore focus on the significa (...)
14Also, sometimes an outsider’s perspective helps put the bigger picture together. Falu Bakrania—who had faced racism first-hand growing up as an Indian kid in the USA—became interested in the study of the construction of identities in the second-generation of South Asians, or British Asians, and the role music played in the process, and pursuing her research interests, she moved to Britain in the early 1990s (Bakrania ix). She states that “in going to clubs and making music, young people were actively constructing the identities that scholars asserted this music was expressing” (ix). There was therefore a cause-and-effect relation between music and identity, in the sense that the former helped crystallise and consolidate a nascent hybrid British Asian identity. She adds that these identities were negotiated amidst conflicts with other youth, and, in my view, also from disagreements with immigrant parents. One of her contributions to the study of British Asian music is that she has distinguished between British Bhangra and Asian Underground, pointing out that the latter “achieved industry success” compared to the former.4
15Predating the Asian Underground, the Wednesday day-timers were “Bhangra day-time concerts that took place on Wednesday afternoons when colleges had free periods” (Lightman 100). It is here that young British Asians reclaimed their personal freedoms, contesting the authority of their parents incognito; however, nothing happening at that level could remain confidential for long. Following opposition from within South Asian communities, the day-timers soon came to be banned (Lightman 100).
16Lightman writes that the day-time concerts “presented opportunities for the British Asian youth to invite other cultures into their newly established British Asian environment on fairly neutral terms, against the backdrop of dance” and “it was here that black, white, and other Asian subcontinent youth […] were exposed to music that was not initially familiar to them” (Lightman 102). Collaborating with Asian artists, Lightman witnessed “the negotiation and translation of musical form and cultural expectations” and also “the mediation between South Asian and Western sensibilities” (3-55). With clandestine day-time concerts, many cultural barriers were pulled down since these enabled the South-Asian second generation to taste many freedoms otherwise denied to them as they mingled and clubbed with other youth who were not necessarily from the same ethnic group as them.
17Lightman’s work on the production of Bhangra in Britain is enlightening as it offers precious insight into his experience of working as a “white” Bhangra record producer in the 1990s. He documents the evolution of the South Asian diasporic Bhangra and how it was hybridized and adapted by the second generation and especially by “diverse cultures seeking new identities and new commercial avenues” (3). To him, Bhangra was and remains, “music for British Asians and not the British mainstream” (99).
18Gurdeep Khabra, a second-generation British Asian who grew up in a Sikh family, encountered Punjabi folk music as it was played around the house, in the car and in melas (fun fairs) (Khabra 18). Khabra felt that the Punjabi Bhangra music was “ubiquitous” through his childhood but less present in his adulthood, a contradiction that sparked his interest in researching the genre. He posits that the “British Bhangra music was invisible in the mainstream as a form of British popular music, and rarely received attention from commentators who recognised its importance to the histories of several migrant communities in the UK” (18).
19Both Khabra and Lightman seem to agree, although for quite different reasons, that despite repeated encounters between British artists and producers and countless opportunities, Bhangra did not merge with British mainstream music, nor did it share the same cultural-cum-artistic space held by British musical pop-rock forms and artists. In fact, Parminder Singh Jutla recognises Bhangra’s centrality to the British Asian music scene because of its underground presence. This is how he conveyed the idea in a 2007 interview with Gurdeep Khabra:
It may not have a definite infrastructure or meet the mainstream standards, but for an unregulated and virtually invisible industry, the UK Bhangra industry has created a worldwide appeal and an international export market. The industry has been an underground industry since inception. Many of its sales were not recorded and were not recognized through mainstream outlets. It has been estimated that many of the songs produced and sold could have entered on the mainstream charts based on unit sales. The industry is still invisible and remains underground, but is slowly moving into the mainstream, through its ability to influence other music forms. (Khabra interview with Jutla 2-3).
20Musical genres like the British Bhangra relied heavily on indigenous or ethnic niches and networks and in the same line of thought, Banerji and Baumann have stressed that these “alternative networks and economic systems” provided conduits and possibilities for arranging Bhangra concerts but also facilitated the “distribution of cheap, pirate cassette tapes” (Khabra 45). Piracy and illegal copying were common as they made it possible to cut costs and red tape. It can be interesting to discuss why Bhangra artists turned to alternate platforms instead of mainstream ones, and why they accepted being “side-streamed.”
21Drawing on two different but complementary schools of thought, the structuralist school (as in the work of Floya Anthias) and the culturalist school (as in the work of Roger Ballard), two explanations can be put forth. As a starting point, the structuralist argument would be that the uneven or unequal distribution of Black artists (or workers) across the labour market was the result of structural constraints and the discriminatory structures and norms of British society, where coloured artists, but not white artists, faced structural and systemic barriers (cf. South Asian artists and producers). The crux of the structuralist paradigm, as elucidated by Virinder Kalra in his book From Textile Mills to Taxi Ranks (2000), would then be that “white management and workers develop(ed) practices and policies which exclude(d) Black workers” (Kalra 7-8). Adapting this statement to the study of Bhangra music in the British national context, Black “workers” can be replaced by Black “artists and producers.” The culturalist school, on the other hand, lays emphasis on the notion of group solidarity in the sense that Black workers/artists choose “ethnic group solidarity” to circumvent structural and systemic barriers and fight the discrimination that they face because of their ethnicity. Thus seen, ethnic networks act as alternate networks that provide the resources and support that are needed by ethnic minority members, groups and communities. When it comes to the production and creation of Bhangra music in Britain, ethnic networks and niches may have supported the production and propagation of Bhangra in response to the discrimination and racism faced by coloured artists and singers. When ethnic group solidarity was used by members of the same ethnic group, it was further strengthened, as were their networks, and as ethnic networks and niches became stronger and larger, they enabled the group to cumulate more wealth and resources, as it produced more wealth and resources. At this stage, it is difficult to establish whether ethnic solidarity networks were activated in response to actual discrimination or to perceived disadvantage, and whether these were activated and utilised de facto or only as “alternate” resources. In choosing not to actively compete for mainstream support and resources, ethnic networks may have contributed instead to the relegation of the bhangra industry to the periphery of the British music industry. Stretching the same explanations further, it can be posited that the British Bhangra of the 1990s, with all its mega-hits and great artists, had reached the limits of socio-cultural inclusion and artistic creation, and owing to both structural and cultural factors, it would have been side-streamed anyways.
22Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, British Asian youth culture was dominated by the British Bhangra and the Asian Underground. South Asian music generally, and Bhangra music specifically, began reflecting themes proper to the second generation, concerns and interrogations that they could relate to. Punjabi MC’s Bhangra music was for them, it targeted the second generation of British Asians as potential audience, and the lyrics of the 1998 blockbuster Mundiyan Ton Bach Ke (which inspired Jay Z for his Beware of the Boys) had little in common with the Bhangra songs of the 1970s. The single carried a timely caution “beware of the boys!”, a message endorsed by South-Asian immigrant parents. Despite its moral undertones, the music was fun and funky.
23In a politically conscious tone, the artist Bally Sagoo played with different forms of music and remixed them with Punjabi Bhangra. Undergoing an identity crisis at the time, Bakrania felt elated when she first heard Sagoo’s 1990 album Star Megamix (Bakrania x). According to her, “in a move that was both culturally and politically innovative, Sagoo remixed musical elements to create a new formation of sound that could not be easily characterized as British, South Asian, or black” (x). Lightman writes that Bally Sagoo, San-j Sanj and his brother Amit XZecutive “produced six albums using samples from other Indian recordings,” all using “new technologies and hip-hop techniques in Bhangra music”—something that Lightman witnessed first-hand as they recorded in his music studio (Lightman 129).
24Following the lead, other Punjabi artists like Apache Indian began experimenting as well. Despite cultural sensitivities and cultural boundaries, producers like Lightman saw the benefit of the cross-cultural approach, so did the artists when they saw “commercial potential” (Lightman 203). When music became successful, it also became acceptable. This is how new genres like the British Bhangra (Bhangra music + drums, bass & guitar) and the Bhangra Muffin (Bhangra music + reggae) came into being. However, Lightman makes it clear that bringing cultural sensitivities down to zero was impossible and many early and highly innovative experiments were boycotted or “shunned by the communities, families and peers” (203).
Figure 2 © Bally Sagoo – BBC Music
25In 1995, Bally Sagoo released his first solo album with the major music label Sony (figure 2 above). For many years, he occupied an important and influential place on local Bhangra scenes, becoming a front runner on the contemporary cultural scene. However, Rupa Huq writes that his “illegal bootleg sales were seen to have not sufficiently translated in commensurate unit sales […] He was subsequently dropped by the label” (Huq 40). Sagoo had almost made it into the mainstream, but he might have been sidelined because of his ambition and the political consciousness that showed in his artistic work.
26In many ways, the 1990s were the peak years of creativity and contestation precisely because the second generation of South Asian immigrants was growing up in Britain. South Asian music mingled with British music, just as younger South Asians struggled to carve a place in British society. Unsurprisingly, South Asian music was usually side-streamed, just like Bally Sagoo whose musical brio was never documented in UK’s official charts. Since the turn of the century, British Bhangra music is almost reductively and exclusively associated to its Punjabi MC moment and the mundiyan ton back ke track, music that is bouncy but marvellously, apolitical.
27The Qawwali has more conservative origins, compared to the Bhangra, and before the age of the cassette tape and commercial concertos, there was no way of disseminating the Qawwali abroad. Contrary to the Bhangra which as a popular, performed folk genre was easily transported to Great Britain by Punjabi people themselves, the Qawwali was a more regulated, normative musical genre patronised by some qawwal clans in India and Pakistan. The art of Qawwali is a hereditary art, passed from father to son, as the case of the legendary qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan illustrates. To give a better idea of how a Qawwali performance is staged, I will borrow from the NPR website:
Considering the electrifying energy that surges through a Qawwali performance, the traditional set-up is rather humble. A group of performers, referred to in English as a "party"—and all male—sit cross-legged on a rug-covered stage. The main singer is usually accompanied by one or two harmoniums to provide melodic support as well as percussion (normally, the tabla and dholak drums), while a small chorus sings and provides heartbeat-like claps. (NPR website)
28This is a fairly realistic account of a live contemporary Qawwali performance; however, for a long time, the Qawwali circulated among the diaspora only as a sonic medium. Regula Qureshi’s first encounter with the Qawwali was with a recorded version from India and as she puts it, despite its being “firmly embedded in the Sufi practice,” the Qawwali was widely recorded and disseminated (in the form of cassettes) for as long as the life of the record industry itself (Qureshi 63). The Qawwali was conservative, but not that conservative, and music always travels, just as people do.
29In the 1960s and 1970s, there were numerous nascent South Asian (Indian and Pakistani) communities across the United Kingdom, Europe and the Americas. Documenting the experiences of such Muslim communities in Canada, Qureshi observed that shared events in the community created a strong foundation for community life. These events included devotional practices like Quran recital assemblies and prayer sessions in which she herself participated. The Qawwali was not yet part of this emerging diasporic religious-cum-cultural landscape due to the “lack of performance resources, given the absence of traditional service professions, whether hereditary musical specialists, such as qawwals who perform mystical hymns for Sufi assemblies, or musically adept artisans and tradesmen” (Qureshi x). Therefore, for quite a long time, the live performances of Qawwali remained restricted to their local and original ambits, and the genre dominated by the Chishtis and Naqshbandis (the two most influential Sufi sects).
30With the advent of the commercial Qawwali, much of that changed. This new-age Qawwali pulled down many cultural-cum-religious barriers and performers realised they too could make a living by monetising the ‘sacred’. When music becomes successful, it also becomes acceptable—the evolution of the Qawwali makes this explicit. With globalisation, transnationalism, cross-cultural encounters and the availability of international commercial flights, artists and troupes began moving freely within the transnational ambit that covers Pakistan, India, and the United Kingdom, all the way up to North America and Canada, recorded cassette tapes making the leap before the artists themselves.
31Thus the 1990s became the golden age of artistic creation, be it within Britain or in the transnational musical arena. Three case studies will now retrace the evolution of the Qawwali as a transnational musical genre and illustrate how the Qawwali fitted into the British cultural and musical scene at different points in time. How has the Qawwali been reappropriated by British Asian populations, and from the vantage point of today, where it stands on the British cultural mosaic.
32In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, the Qawwali became extremely popular in the diaspora, thanks to its transmutation into the commercial Qawwali. The commercial Qawwali was unlike the Qawwali of the saints and Sufis, and as Jaffri rightly states, it was not meant to induce ecstasy, it was for entertainment (Jaffri 1). As it left its original ambits, the Qawwali reached out to a large and more diverse public. This Qawwali was enjoyable and inclusive, without being too sacred. This is how Jaffri encapsulates this idea:
explosion of access to and information about Qawwali […] resulted in lifting this rather esoteric music genre from the private, secluded sphere of the shrine to the public, open sphere of the marketplace. Qawwali began to emerge in areligious gatherings, and musical recordings. (Jaffri 1)
33While the commercialisation of the Qawwali can be understood as a normal consequence of globalisation, other concomitant factors played a positive role as well. The age of the commercial Qawwali paralleled the rise of a young qawwal named Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who descended from the Sufi saint Khawaja Moinuddin Chishti. In 1985, Khan gave his first international performance at the World of Music, Arts and Dance festival at Mersea Island in Great Britain (Real World Records, n.d). Almost prophetically, Khan was introduced as the world’s biggest qawwal before he had become one (figure 3 below). Over the next twelve years, he was to give regular concerts across the United Kingdom, Europe, and the Americas, collaborating with renowned Western artists like Peter Gabriel, Michael Brook and Eddie Vedder on records that were acclaimed worldwide, and that earned him the gratifying title of the Emperor of Qawwali (Kalia 1). In 1997, the 48 year-old maestro passed away in London, and with that, his eccentric career came to an abrupt end.
Figure 3 © Real World Music – “Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Party Live at WOMAD 1985”
34Critics unanimously agree that Khan’s genius contributed to making the Qawwali a transnational musical genre, encompassing the vast cultural space that stretched from Pakistan to Great Britain, and from Canada and the United States to India. Encapsulating the same thought, Sonia Gaind-Krishnan writes that:
It was, without question, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (NFAK) that made the most lasting impressions on the international soundscape, although he was not the first to bring the sounds of Qawwali to the outposts of postcolonial empire. His musical works are the seed from which diasporic developments in the Qawwali listening space have sprung. (Gaind-Krishnan 1-2)
35Qualifying Khan as a commercial qawwal would be an understatement. He was a great qawwal who found himself in the age of the commercial Qawwali. He then availed himself of the opportunities that came his way to take Qawwali to the next level, setting high standards for those who were to march in his steps (including his nephew Rahat Fateh Ali Khan). More importantly, the case of the Fateh Ali Khan family demonstrates how hereditary qawwals adapted to the changing cultural and musical landscape of the late 20th century and how they created space for creation and collaboration all the while respecting cultural sensitivities and norms specific to the genre.
363.2 The 2000s–The Qawwali since the turn of the century
37During the 1990s, the Qawwali stepped out of its sanctuary and gradually created a space for itself in the West. The genre’s essence did not wane, but, adopting a novel posture, it entered an age attuned with commercial standards and public demand. By the end of the century, the Qawwali had proven itself capable of embracing differences and divisions of faith and culture. Inclusion, this was the message of the Sufis. Making a similar point, Gaind-Krishnan writes that with the rise of political Islam and reactionary state policies, Sufism became a more acceptable version of Islam, and Qawwali the medium through which it was registered audibly and materially on the international landscape (Gaind-Krishnan 1-2). She writes:
Prominent musicians such as the Sabri Brothers and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan exposed audiences in the West to the sounds of Qawwali, in recent years, non-hereditary groups of musicians based in the US and UK have begun to perform songs from the Qawwali repertoire. (Gaind-Krishnan 2-10)
38Today, the demand for Qawwalis is so significant that it has become a permanent feature of performances dedicated to the diaspora, and most (Muslim) South Asian performers mandatorily include it in their concerts abroad (Jaffri 1). The Qawwali mixes well with the ghazal (poem) category, overlapping with other forms of Sufi music too. The Sufi singer Abida Parveen often mixes both. Many musical experiments successfully use the Qawwali label to merge modern pieces or singles with titbits of famous Qawwalis. Pakistan’s Coke Studio is a musical platform greatly enjoyed in a number of countries including Pakistan, India, the United Kingdom, the Americas, and Canada. Past the 1990s, the Qawwali became a vehicle of cultural bridging between the East and the West. The most striking examples are those of the British-Iranian artist Sami Yusuf and the Qawwali troupe Fanna Fillah (figure 4 below).
39Twenty years ago, a young Canadian named Geoffrey Lyons was drawn to the Sufi tradition (fanna-fi-allah website). At the young age of seventeen, Lyons left for India and found a master in whose company he spent a few years immersing in Indian and Islamic mystics. Eventually, he converted to Islam, chose Tahir as Islamic name, and adopted Qawwali as a way of life. In 2001, Tahir and his wife swore allegiance to the Chishti school of Sufism and founded their own qawwali troupe called Fanna Fillah (Annihilation into God). While the troupe has performed in prestigious locations across the globe, they have also earned the privilege of singing live at the shrines of renowned Sufis in India and Pakistan. Over the years, Tahir Qawwal has continued to perfection the art of Qawwali and the harmonium in the company of contemporary qawwals and singers.
Figure 4 © The group Fanna fillah - DAWN.COM
(Tahir Qawwal is centre left, his wife Amina is in the centre, two qawwals are on the left and three on the right)
40Sami Yusuf’s musical career is another illustration of full immersion in Sufi culture. A singer of the nasheed, a variant of Sufi music, Yusuf is dubbed as “Islam’s biggest rock star” and the “biggest British star in the Middle East” (Sami Yusuf website). Yusuf sings a vast repertoire of classics and revisited Qawwalis in Urdu, Persian and Arabic, collaborating with artists worldwide. His recent performance at the Dubai Expo was a rendition of the famous “Dam Mast Qalandar” Qawwali by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Interestingly, compared to the usually modest performances of Fanna Fillah, Yusuf’s concerts are staged with pomp reminding the observer of the greatness of God and the smallness of the singer compared to the vast universe (figure 5 below).
Figure 5 © The Eternal City –
41As these various examples demonstrate, the contemporary commercial Qawwali is diverse and multifaceted. More importantly, the lives of Tahir Qawwal and Sami Yusuf are evidence of the profound impact the Qawwali has had on the West since the 1990s, just as the work of these new-age qawwals shows that following the tradition, the Qawwali has retained its intrinsically inclusive, harmonious, and cohesive artistic nature, navigating the globe as a fluid medium that transcends barriers of faith, class and culture.
42Another interesting but peculiar instance of cross-cultural encounters is the collaboration between the Anglo-Indian artist Susheela Raman and the Mian Mir qawwals from Lahore, evidence that the Qawwali continues to attract artists from across faiths and cultures. In a piece written for The Guardian, Susheela Raman shares her personal experience of travelling to Lahore with her guitarist in 2012 and collaborating with the Mian Mir Qawwals. It is rather surprising that being a non-Muslim woman, Raman was accepted in the group and was not expected to comply with the norms specific to the genre. The recording of her concert shows her gliding across the stage with ease surrounded by the qawwals. Of Tamil-British origins herself, Raman takes pride in her dual identity and she has, throughout her career, organised and participated in many cross-cultural collaborations. More recently, she performed with the Rizwan Muazzam qawwals in Abu Dhabi, a musical project that crowns the 2017-18 collaboration between the British Council and the UAE (figure 6 below).
Figure 6 Susheela Raman with the Rizwan Muazzam qawwals in UAE © Gulf News
43Such forms of collaboration and cross-cultural creation are unlike what is seen in the case of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Peter Gabriel but it demonstrates that inter-cultural encounters are not a single symbolic event but more like a continuum. Moreover, despite the long-prevailing political antagonisms between India and Pakistan, the cultural arena is more harmonious, cohesive and full of hope for South Asia’s future. Indeed, the transnational social and cultural networks between the United Kingdom, India and Pakistan are dynamic and ever expanding, and cross-cultural encounters continue to make the transnational nexus colourful and vibrant, as elucidated in the artistic work of Susheela Raman, and these encounters are deeply meaningful, both in the long and short terms. As the subliminal experience of sharing an ecstatic evening encourages people to put aside their differences for the time of a concert, it also provides new forums for inter-cultural exposure in an atmosphere of tolerance, thus creating new pathways for future collaboration and cooperation in various areas which are not limited to arts and music.
44Over time, the Bhangra and the Qawwali have become South Asian cultural markers in the United Kingdom. At first sight, both genres may seem to have been marginalised in favour of white, mainstream British art and music, and despite some fruitful collaborations between British artists and producers with South Asian artists of the Bhangra and the Qawwali, the cultural influence of these genres on British society seems limited. Few white British singers or artists have taken any vivid interest in these genres or tried to appropriate them. Finally, while these genres have been commercially reappropriated by British Asians, and remain popular at South Asian cultural events, there have been no landmark moments in recent years. However, more nuances can be added to the foregone observations.
45With the passage of time, younger British Asians (especially British Indians) have gradually adopted mainstream tastes and trends in arts and music, without totally giving up on South Asian films, food, culture and music. Undoubtedly, coming generations of South Asians will tend to recognise themselves more as British than as Indians or Pakistanis, this being a natural consequence of progressive inclusion in Britain society. Nonetheless, the Bhangra and the Qawwali remain strong cultural markers that remind these younger generations that their ancestors belonged somewhere else.
46Compared to the Qawwali, the British Bhangra seems to have achieved, ultimately, a privileged place on Britain’s artistic-cum-musical arena. For instance, a full segment was dedicated to its performance first at the 2012 Olympic Games and then again at the Commonwealth Games ten years later. The implication is that the British Bhangra fits better on Britain’s artistic and cultural landscape, and is easier to include because of its secular nature. The Qawwali’s remarkable popularity in the transnational arena, on the other hand, compensates for its absence from British mainstream music.
47Indeed, contemporary British Bhangra and Qawwali seem devoid of any political contestation, evidence of the gradual and progressive socio-cultural, economic and political inclusion and integration of successive generations of South Asians in the United Kingdom. The production and dissemination of both these genres and their embeddedness in the transnational, transcontinental arena continues to be shaped by influences, movements and exchanges between Great Britain, India (notably Bollywood) and Pakistan, transnational ties which in turn open new avenues and provide ever new opportunities for growth, artistic creation and collaboration, not limited to these three countries.
48To conclude on an open-ended note, it can be said that the Bhangra and the Qawwali are indeed valuable and meaningful contributions to British culture and society—irrespective of their position on the BBC music charts—and should be seen as such. While this study has focussed on the transnational evolution of both musical genres over the final decades of the twentieth century, future studies could look into the forms, modes and significance of various socio-cultural transnationalism(s) and subsequent social transformations which have come about in both home and host countries over the recent years, including but not limited to the study of popular arts and music.