Balochistan Point Voice of Nation
ISLAMABAD: Speakers at Muzakra session at National Institute of Folk and Traditional Heritage, Lok Virsa here Thursday discussed various aspects of Indigenous Sufi Music.
Culture experts including Sheraz Haider, DG AGPR, Mussarrat Youssuf from United Nations and Dr. Tanvir Anjum, Research Scholar from Quaid e Azam University spoke on the origin, evolution, content, typology, significance, current status, contemporary understanding and popularity of the Sufi music
According to them, the propagation of Sufism started from its origin in Baghdad (Iraq) and spread to Persia, Pakistan, North Africa Central Asia and Muslim Spain. Sufism has produced a large body of poetry in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Kurdish, Urdu, Punjabi, Sindhi and even Bangla, from which the genre of Sufi music, lyrics and qawwali has emerged.
The Sufi poetry has integrated with the local musical culture of the various parts of the world and has created a rainbow of variations down the ages. In India too, Sufi music has been contextualized and the result is qawali, waee, kafi and dohray which is distinct from various genres of Sufi music found globally across the Islamic world, they said.
Mussarrat Youssuf is former visiting faculty of Quaid e Azam University and currently associated with the United Nations.
Sheraz Manzoor Haider is Director General at the Office of the Auditor General of Pakistan. Haider is a cultural historian, an ethno-musicologist, a dance critic, playwright.
On classical, folk, film music, and dance, he has been contributing articles to newspapers and magazines since 1990.
He also produced a series of documentaries on lost genre of light classical music of North India. One of his video documentaries was screened at an international competition hosted by the Japanese television in 1999.
Professor Dr. Tanvir Anjum is a faculty member at the History department of Quaid-I- Azam University for the last twenty years. She has produced a number of scholarly works on Islamic and Indo Pakistan history.
Sufism makes the major area of her research works.
She is the author of 7 books and 24 research articles.
Muzakra is an interactive session in which audience can engage with the guest speakers during the question and answer session. It is regular part of Lok Virs’s activities to preserve and promote the various forms of heritage in the country.
Published in The Balochistan Point on November 1, 2018
