Pakistan Qawwali de la Delhi Gharana (Karachi)

Subhan Ahmed Nizami may not be the first name that comes to mind when qawwali (the music of South Asian Sufis) is mentioned, but the Nizami family has been in the qawwali business for some 700 years, tracing its roots back to the time of Amir Khusrau, the 13th-century inventor of the genre. The Nizamis are officially known as qawwal baché (literally, ‘ofspring’ of the original performers as trained by Khusrau himself), and their performance certainly shows them to be masters of their art.

When qawwali was first pioneered outside South Asia during the 1980s, it was largely the powerful rhythms and syncopated hand-clapping that seemed to appeal to the masses in the Western world, so it's all too easy to forget that the music is as much about melody and, of course, the antiquated mystical poetry. The third track here, ‘Manum Mehve Jamal e oo’, a Farsi poem describing the devotee enveloped in the love of the divine, reminds us of the importance of melody in qawwali.

This is an excellent recording with a superb collection of songs from Khusrau's original repertoire, including the world's first qawwali ‘Man Kunto Maula’, usually known as ‘Qaul’, which, although listed as the first track, actually appears second. Again, according to the tracklisting the album should have concluded with ‘Rang’ (Colour), a song by Khusrau to celebrate his acceptance into Sufi discipleship, but it instead appears as the penultimate track.