Farid Ayaz Qawwal and Brothers

Dublinks - Dublin, Ireland
Wednesday, June 14, 2006

To celebrate European Music Day, Improvised Music Company brings one of the renowned Qaawali performers, Farid Ayaz Qawwal and Brothers to Dublin for an intimate show at Liberty Hall.

Hailing from Pakistan, Farid Ayaz Qawwal and Brothers are distinguished torchbearers of Qaawali, the extraordinary devotional music first brought to the hearts and minds of Western audiences by their countryman, the late great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.

Qaawali is the devotional music of Sufism, meaning Way of the Heart, and draws on many centuries of Islamic poetry in a journey into the passionate, ecstatic world of the Sufi mystics.

Aided by their chorus of singers and accompaniments from tabla, dholak and harmonium, the qaawal's principal singers Farid Ayaz and Abu Mohammed draw their audience into a transcendental world of passionate love songs.

From the tranquil, meditative opening statements, the music slowly takes on a brilliant rhythmic intensity. Arms outstretched, each vocalist calls out spiralling improvisations as he soars above the hypnotic chant and driving pulse of the chorus, until finally the song reaches its ecstatic coda.

In live performance, this sensuous music of the soul is an overwhelming experience performed by musicians with an ancestral lineage that reaches back through history to the Mughul emperors, and qaawali's earliest classical forms.

A night of classic Qaawali songs with an intensity that speaks to the heart beyond language, race and creed, Farid Ayaz Qawwal and Brothers play the Liberty Hall on Wednesday, the 21st of June.