How can sound provide a deeper understanding of South Asian Islam? What can the study of Qawwali music teach us about religious identities in modern South Asia? How does sacred music defy constructions of nationhood in contemporary Pakistan?Despite Qawwali’s spiritual significance for South Asian Muslims and popularity as “Sufi” music, there has been limited scholarly research on the social lives and performance-histories of its hereditary practitioners. I aim to conduct an ethnographic study on the transformation of Qawwali in Pakistan since its 1947 partition, through the lens of some of its oldest hereditary practitioners called the “Qawwal Bachche,” most of whom migrated to Karachi during partition and continue to perform there till today. Based on my formal music apprenticeship with a member of the Qawwal Bacche over six years, I propose that despite being used as a distinctly Muslim marker of Pakistan’s national identity, it is a heterogeneous tradition that operates across a hybrid of quasi-religious (sacred and entertainment) spaces and a multiplicity of musical genres. These continue to negotiate and challenge a singular normative Islam, often traversing beyond identity, borders, and citizenship, as evident through its oldest hereditary specialists’ oral histories and diverse repertoires. While I wish to corroborate this hypothesis through further fieldwork and archival research, I also aim to use a cross-disciplinary approach for this study on Qawwali, combining perspectives from the anthropology of Islam, sound studies, and South Asian studies. Through this project, I wish to encourage a richer discourse on overlapping Indic and Islamicate musical traditions that continue to inhabit modern South Asia.
Wajiha Naqvi is a vocalist, song-writer and music researcher from Pakistan. She is a student of North Indian classical music and has been featured as a lead artist in Coke Studio Pakistan, one of the country’s premiere music shows. She has a Master’s degree in Near Eastern Studies from New York University with a background in the anthropology of sacred music from the Islamic world. Currently she is pursuing her doctoral degree in music at King’s College London where she focuses on the social histories and musical repertoire of hereditary North Indian classical and Sufi music practitioners living in Pakistan.