Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali

Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali is a group led by two nephews of the late, legendary Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Both Khan and his nephews are practitioners of Qawwali singing, a unique and entrancing style of Sufi devotional music. The Qawwali style of singing was developed as a way for the Sufis, the mystic sect of Islam, to find a spiritual purification and oneness with the Beloved or Allah. For centuries the Khan family have mastered this singularly passionate form of religious singing and chant. In the early ’80s Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan attained worldwide notice with the spirited performances, and Qawwali music transcended its purely religious origins to become a musical style respected and beloved for it’s vocal beauty and captivating aura. Continuing this grand tradition, brothers Rizwan and Muazzam Ali Khan pour their hearts and souls into their music, its sound built on the sheer power of the human voice. The brothers, the primary vocalists, are joined by two harmonium players, a tabla player, and three back-up singers who also act as percussionists. The fascinating nature of a Qawwali percussionist is that he provides rhythm not with an instrument but with steady handclaps throughout the song. The claps are airy and echoing, produced in a fashion akin to clapping two blocks together. The typical Qawwali song begins with a low melodic flourish on the harmonium, an accordion-like organ powered by a bellows, followed by a mellifluous vocal statement by the lead singer. The tabla player and the percussionists join in, setting the pulsing beat. The dueling harmoniums then echo in time with a swirling breathy resonance. Over the course of the song, the lead vocalist’s lyrical leaps and filigrees are answered in harmony and in the round by the back-up singers. After cascading and floating on waves of dizzying and enthralling laryngeal magic, the song climaxes with a sweeping crescendo. Much like the first time I saw Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali, the group opened their performance with a song “Allah Ho” a devotional hymn in praise of Allah that quickly captivated the crowd with its hypnotizing rhythms and vocal gymnastics. Though the lyrics were sung in a language lost on most audience members, the message was translated via Rizwan’s trilling and trembling calls and Muazzam’s melismatic responses. With this first number, the brothers articulated their musical quest with a profound performance, begun slow and mournfully but driven to ecstatic heights and punctuated by shrieks and shouts of deep passion and exuberant hand gesticulations. With each song the group built a tessellation of voice and sound. Rizwan and Muazzam engaged in a vocal dance, a lyrical bob and weave where phrases and lyrics were passed back and forth. Rizwan would begin one line with undulating vocal notes and fillips to then be answered by Muazzam in ululating exclamations. Searching, yearning vocal solos as beautifully brassy as any horn were continually embellished and joined in melodious harmony by the various back-up singers, each equally adept at the chants and wails of ecstasy. Qawwali as interpreted by Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali proves that music can transcend cultural, linguistic, and religious boundaries. Through instrument and song the Qawwalis endeavored to reach a trancelike state of spiritual ecstasy and enlisted the entire audience in this act of transmutation. One could scarcely sit unmoved under the sounds of the mesmerizing voices, driving insinuating tabla beats, and the lilting, dancing rhythms of the harmoniums. These musical masters were breathtaking in their ability to speak with glottal groans and graceful glissando. Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music could not have been a more perfect setting for this night of music, with its expert acoustics and intimate atmosphere made even more cozy by the sight of a band all seated on the floor as if gathered in someone’s living room. Few who witnessed this concert of supreme artistic ability could help but be converts to the world of the Sufi mystics. Whether the audience could testify or not to Allah’s presence or pay homage to centuries-old Sufi saints, the listeners most certainly could iterate themes of peace, love and happiness. The lineage of the Ali Khan family is well-served by Rizwan-Muazzam Qawwali as they bring this rare and beautiful devotional singing to audiences so rarely treated to nights of such musical bliss.