The faithful listened to the music seated, in a state of inner contemplation, and allowed themselves to be gradually overcome by trance. The solo singing was provided by a cantor. The concert took place under the direction of a sheikh. SamaвЂ™ is a concept difficult to translate, since it covers a range of meanings from audition to listening to the spiritual aspects of a musical concert rendered for that purpose.Д«y the end of the eleventh century, a samaвЂ™ was a spiritual concert in which the music was mainly sung, sometimes by a soloist, sometimes by a chorus, including instrumental elements of varying importance. Kitab adab al-sama:y wa al-wajd, the 'Book of the Right Usages of Audition and TranceвЂ.вЂ™ - such is the title given by AI-Ghazali (1085 - 1111) to the eighth section of his famous Ihya uвЂ™lum al-din, 'Book of the Revivifying of the Sciences of Faith.' Written at the beginning of the twelfth century AD, this book is one of the most important treatises on Sufism.ДЇrom this source and other contemporary writers, it is possible for us to reconstruct a description of a ceremony called samaвЂ™. lt remained for the great Muslim philosopher AI-Ghazali to unify the knowledge of his time.ДЎ.1.1 AI-Ghazali and the lslamic Musical Tradition Arab musicologists such as al-Kindi (d.873) and al-Farabi (b.872) wrote on the effects of music, but the first to take into account the relation between music and trance were the Brothers of Purity (lkhwan al-safa), 'a group of philosophers, scientists, mathematicians, and litterateurs who flourished at AI-Sasra during the second half of the eleventh century'. Qawwali as a musical form is closely linked to the sufic traditions of Islam and the particular practices that Sufi scholars developed to achieve closeness to God. Having had the honour of winning the President's Pride of Performance Medal, they are performing at the National Folk Music Festival of Pakistan 1988. Among the performers, the focus is on a bearer of a great tradition of qawwali, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and his group.

In this report, Lok Virsa endeavours to give the reader a background to the origins and history of qawwali and the setting in the villages where it is performed. The medium of qawwali to present the deep mystical, philosophy of Sufi Islam is generally known, but very little has been written about it to date. Under the Research Report Programme, preliminary work done on various elements of traditional culture is made available to the reader as soon as possible in order to ensure that the research work done by Lok Virsa does not remain only archival, but also can reach a wider readership. Lok Virsa (the National Iristitute of Folk and Traditional Heritage) has the mandate of collecting, documenting, archiving and projecting all aspects of our cultural traditions.

Nat qawali