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Not too long ago, I came across this video of a group of women performing Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s famous qawwali ‘Tumhe dillagi bhool jani paregi’. To see white women rendering a classical qawwali was shocking, amusing and entertaining in equal measure.

The singing sounded off-key at times, the notes weren’t always perfect and the pronunciation of words was found wanting. What they didn’t lack, however, was passion while singing. They looked unbothered about how they sounded and what might be said about their performance. They seemed to be living in the moment as they swayed with the rhythm of the ever-enchanting kalam. 

One of the two men seen in the video was Tahir Hussain Faridi Qawwal, popularly known as Tahir Qawwal. His wife, Alexandra Amie, leads the ensemble called the Ilahi Sufi Qawwal, the first-ever qawwal group consisting of women — mostly white women — belonging to different parts of the world, now living and working in Ubud, a scenic upland town in Bali, Indonesia. 

Qawwali is a form of devotional music specific to the Indo-Pak region, which is performed by a group of musicians who recite spiritual poetry in a manner that can lead listeners to a state of sublime ecstasy. As Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it, “Qawwali is a musical vehicle by which a group of male musicians — called qawwals — delivers inspirational Sufi messages to a traditionally male assembly of devotees.” When seen in this context, a group of women making room for themselves in a field that has been predominantly masculine for centuries is nothing short of monumental. 

So, who are these women and how did they end up being in a qawwal group? 

A qawwal from every continent

As Amie puts it, they are a part of a pantheistic community made up of people from different beliefs and cultures — something that becomes evident if one watches their videos attentively. Symbols of multiculturalism can be seen in the form of ajrak worn by the musicians or used as a background (Tahir says he received the ajrak when he performed at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sindh’s Sehwan), or statues of Lord Ganesha or Natraj placed throughout the room.

Bali, the place they now call home, provides them with a suitable ground for spiritual awakening through music. It offers them an atmosphere where they can learn and grow while living in harmony with the local people who practise their own kind of ancestral spirituality. 

When the group was formed some five years ago, it had members from 13 countries and from every continent. Currently, the ensemble consists of 11 women and two men — three if you count Tahir and Amie’s little son. These women are from Indonesia, Canada, Slovenia, Switzerland and Russia and Sweden.

The group has had some members from India and Pakistan along the way too, but they didn’t continue. In the current lineup, the oldest member besides Amie has been with the group for four years while the most recent joined a year ago.

Is being a qawwal their full-time job, I ask. No, they don’t pursue qawwali as a full-time profession, Amie answers. “Qawwali takes many, many years to learn and despite the heavy training they undergo here, their level of skill is still rudimentary. Moreover, the Ilahi project is focused on the learning aspect, not the performance aspect. So they all have different careers and occupations and take out time from their hectic schedules to learn qawwali and perform with the band,” Tahir chimes in.

A doula, a lawyer, some musicians and a teacher

One of the longest-serving members of the group is a doula — someone who assists women throughout their pregnancies and during labour. Talking about their dedication and seriousness for qawwali, Amie shares that there have been instances when the woman in question was assisting someone with childbirth all through the night and still showed up for practice in the morning.

The group also has teachers, women with a background in music, a lawyer who practices international law and a counsellor. They come to the Sama School of Music — a venture started by Tahir in 2003 — twice a week to learn qawwali. The school offers online and in-person classes to study and learn devotional and sufi qawwali music. 

A (women-only) qawwal group is born

How did this motley group of women decide to form a qawwal troupe?

“It’s a long story,” Tahir says with what sounds like a sigh of resignation.

Before Ilahi Sufi Qawwal, there was (and still is) another qawwali group called Fana Fi Allah, “a predominantly ‘white’ qawwal group” based out of California. Tahir, a Canadian by birth, formed this group in 2001 along with some other like-minded people and continues to lead it. While managing Fana Fi Allah, he had this urge to make a comprehensive documentary about all spiritual forms of music.

With little to no funding and numerous other engagements that occupied most of his time, the project took him almost 20 years to produce. The editing process was completed over the course of a year, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Alexandra helped me do the final editing. We were editing the portion that carried the work of Abida Parveen and Alexandra was completely mesmerised by her rendition of ‘Main Nara-e-Mastana’; it awakened something in her.”

Amie decided to learn the qawwali and the couple worked on it together. When they played it at a gathering in Bali, the audience — especially the women — was awestruck. “Some six or seven women came up to us after our performance and they were like, ‘what is this music?’” Amie reminisced.

“On our way home, Tahir and I wondered about how a qawwali would sound like if it was sung solely by women. We announced the idea in our community and the very next day, the same six women who had approached us after our performance, showed up [for training]. That’s basically how the idea started and the group came into being.” 

The newly formed group learned a few compositions, recorded a video and uploaded it on YouTube. The video exploded — something the group hadn’t anticipated. “Maybe at some level we did. But we weren’t expecting the magnitude of the feedback and the sheer amount of support that we received,” shares a visibly pleased Amie.

The overwhelmingly positive feedback encouraged them to do more. The ensemble can now perform 18 qawwalis, in multiple languages including Urdu and Punjabi. Isn’t it difficult for them to sing in languages which are very different from their own? “Of course, it is,” says Amie. “We first learn the translations of every kalam we choose to sing and then we do our very best with the language. We have some language teachers as well. Also, the native speakers coming as guests to our classes help us with our pronunciation a lot. When we perform a kalam, we do so after understanding it as much as we can.” 

The Ilahi Sufi Qawwal group has performed in many countries so far. They have played before large crowds, including at the Jashn-e-Rekhta in Dubai earlier this year in front of a crowd of 5,000 people, as well as for small, intimate audiences. “I think the more intimate experiences always sit better with us. It’s nice to play on a big stage and be recognised by a big crowd, but the best ones are when we’re very intimate or acoustic. It feels like a really big affirmation when people appreciate us and we can see their reaction up close,” Amie says.

Caustic comments

All performing artists are prone to criticism. It’s inevitable that they remain unprotected from judgment once they put their craft in front of an audience. What kind of criticism usually comes the way of the Ilahi Sufi Qawwal?

“Check out the comments below our videos,” Tahir says with a hint of bitterness in his voice. 

“He has become cynical because he has been in this arena for much longer and has experienced more negativity. People have their ways of giving us feedback. Some even offer to help if they find something missing in our performance. We are mostly criticised for our pronunciation. But sometimes people get very critical. The biggest criticism is, why are you white people learning this culture?” Amie explains.

“We were never bad qawwal, even when we started,” Tahir interjects, “we trained very hard, and we had great results.”

“But we are a part of this competitive climate where some people are jealous of the attention we usually get. People are like, who are these white people? Since they haven’t seen goras playing qawwali before, it is a bit of a shock for them. And then there are comments like, ‘oh, they are never gonna be as good as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’! Of course, what we do is never going to be anything like what anybody else is doing so what’s the point of pointing that out? There is always room for improvement, we agree, but that’s what we’re doing. We’re literally living in a school to learn. We are not claiming to be high-level artists.”

Do such comments dampen their spirits? 

“When people recognise the sincerity behind what we do, the sheer amount of devotion that we have for this art and the many, many hours that we spend honing it…I think people are coming to that point where they say, you know, they are not just dabbling. They are actually, sincerely invested in it…that helps us a lot,” says a hopeful Amie.